Grand Manan Whale & Seabird Research Station, GMWSRS 24 Route 776, Grand Manan, NB (2026)

05/09/2026

Lobsters are waking up!

Well, we know they aren’t really sleeping all winter, but we do know that their metabolism and activity decline significantly when the water is cold. But we are starting to see some action. Over the past few days, I have been getting reports again of people catching tagged lobsters. Yesterday, someone from Vinalhaven, Maine, caught a lobster that had been tagged in the Grey Zone in September…a trip of 99 nautical miles, as the crow flies. That fisher reported that the lobster looked great (described her as “pretty angry” - !!) and her eggs looked good as well. You can see her straight-line path in the map.

It has been REALLY cold on the bottom of the Bay of Fundy this winter and spring. The graph shows data from Hobo thermal loggers over the past few winters, and you can see that winter/spring 2026 (the red line) was much colder than the previous two years – in fact, the water dipped below 3 degrees C – I am not sure I have seen that before. Things are warming up though – someone hauled a Hobo thermal logger on a trap yesterday, and it reported a bottom temperature of close to 5 degrees C. Here’s hoping for a strong and safe spring fishing season for everyone as things warm up again!

It is also time for us to start planning our summer search activities. We will be busy on the water again this season, collecting zooplankton, doing surveys, and deploying more drifters.

We are looking for a guide for our small marine museum for the summer (~mid June to Labour Day) – we have a federal grant to pay a student, so if you are interested in this position, please email Heather at [email protected].

03/14/2026

We at the Research Station are extremely saddened by last Friday’s news that Ken Ingersoll passed away. Ken was a huge part of the research station for over four decades. Whether he was helping with something boat-related, working on logistics for where we could land a dead whale, talking about lighthouses, checking in with people on the water via VHF, or (so many of us will remember him this way) just sitting with you and drinking coffee while sharing a laugh, all of us have countless fond memories of Ken.

And of course, pick your favourite Kenny-ism – such as “it’s blowing hard enough to trip a snake”…and a few other choice phrases that maybe aren’t suitable for a public page...

Ken always enjoyed his birthday Black Forest Cake, which I happily made for him every year – and sometimes he would laughingly share some with my Dad – and they would joke about who would finish it!

Ken went through some hard times but somehow always got through them, and I think it was a surprise to all of us that he didn’t come out on top with this one. He certainly should have.

The Research Station and Grand Manan will not be the same without Ken. We will miss you, Kenny Ladders.

08/31/2025

Update on those Maine thermal loggers!

Good news, the two thermal loggers that were recaptured in Maine waters (see post from August 10) arrived in the mail, and now we can compare the thermal profiles that these female lobsters experienced with data from animals recaptured in the Bay of Fundy.

I have updated the map that shows where tags 44 and 852 (the Maine recaptures) were released and recaught, and added two other data files (tags 51 and 327) recovered from lobsters released at about the same spot, but recaptured in the Bay of Fundy, with similar time frames to the Maine tag deployments.
The tag with the dark blue line (44) is the long-term deployment (Nov 2023 – July 2025) recaptured off of Jonesport. I have matched it up with tag 51 (orange line) for the same dates in the early part of lobster 44’s walkabout. The dark blue and orange lines parallel almost identically, suggesting that these lobsters experienced very similar temperature regimes. Because 51 was recaptured in the Bay of Fundy, this suggests to me that maybe 44 was also still in the Bay for the first part of her deployment.

In the second half of 44’s deployment, I have matched her up with 327 (purple line; recaptured in the Bay of Fundy) and 852 (light blue line; recaptured south of Bar Harbor). Here, 852 looks similar to 44, while 327 experienced water that was far colder than the two tags caught in Maine. This matches up with what we know from thermal tags on lobsters in the Bay of Fundy – the winter/spring of 2025 was really cold compared to previous years (we showed this in our June 29 post comparing 2020-2025 temperatures). So it is possible (?likely?) that both 44 and 852 moved into the Gulf of Maine somewhere in the winter of 2025 (maybe around January?). Of course, we have no way of knowing exactly what any of these lobsters do or where they go, other than where we release them and where they are recaptured. But it is fun to guess!

Again, THANK YOU to the two fishers from Maine, for not only reporting these tagged lobsters, but for also taking the time to take the tags off and mail them to me so that we could get the data. We can’t do any of this without the fishing community.

I hope everyone is having a great long weekend – enjoy the last days of summer! As always, email me with questions: [email protected].

08/19/2025

Breaking news: A new record for a long-distance lobster!

Yesterday was a very exciting day, as out of the blue, I had a text from a 774 area code, with a message that someone had caught a lobster with my cell phone number on it. 774? That’s southeastern Massachusetts! The fisher, who turned out to be Mike O’Brien, on the Marika C, was able to read the ID number on the tag. That female was tag # 9365 – I had tagged her on December 2, 2024, southeast of Grand Manan (see blue star on map). Then 257 days later, on August 16, she appeared in Mike’s trap, just off Cape Cod (red star on map). That is 221 nautical miles as the crow flies (and as we all know, lobsters probably don’t travel in a straight line). For those needing translation, 221 nautical miles is 254 miles, or 409 km. Our previous record holder had been a lobster that traveled (straight line distance) 141 nautical miles (162 miles, or 261 km) in 256 days. This was our first recapture off Cape Cod, and we say a huge thank you to Mike for reporting it! This was something I had not expected.

The ground covered by tag # 9365 also eclipsed the longest distance recorded by a tagged lobster in a very similar study carried out by a DFO scientist named Alan Campbell in 1982-1983 (some of you might remember that project, and maybe you even helped out with it!). Alan tagged female lobsters carrying eggs around Grand Manan, and then asked the fishery to help him by reporting recaptures of the tagged animals. The longest straight-line distance Alan reported was 322 km (=174 nautical miles or 200 miles) in 329 days – off the Maine coast.

I would love to know the path that lobster # 9365 took from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Cod. Was she able to catch a ride with any currents? Did anyone else catch her in a trap along the way? She certainly didn’t pay any attention to borders – fishing areas, provinces, states, or countries. If only lobsters could talk…

Thanks again to everyone who calls in a tagged lobster. Any questions? Email me at [email protected].

08/10/2025

As promised, here are two reports of recent recaptures of our tagged lobsters in Maine waters!

If you have been following our research, you will know that we are deploying thermal loggers on female lobsters to see what kinds of temperatures they are experiencing from late fall through the winter and spring. These loggers record temperature every 15 minutes, and we have to get the tags back to obtain the data they collect. Most of the thermal loggers we put out are released in deep water on the eastern side of LFA 38, but not all of them – some are released north or south of Grand Manan as well.

At the end of July, I had not one but TWO reports of Maine fishers catching female lobsters with thermal tags. On July 29 2025, I was contacted by Zac Ransom (F/V Annabri Mae) about a lobster he had just caught. This lobster turned out to be wearing tag 852 (see photo on the day she was recaptured). I had tagged her on November 28, 2024 – so she will give us about 8 months of temperature data. You can see on the map the release location (star) and recapture location (green circle) for this lobster. As the crow flies, that is a straight-line distance of 101 nautical miles (about 116 miles, or 187 km). We can be pretty confident that the lobster did not travel in an exactly straight line! She likely traveled much farther than that – lobsters move greater distances than you might think!

Then, two days later on July 31, 2025, I got a text message from Jeff Libby (F/V Autumn Gale). He also had a lobster with a thermal logger on it, this time closer to Grand Manan (purple circle on map). This lobster had also been released at the red star location, so her straight-line distance was 56 nautical miles (or 64 miles, or 104 km). But the cool thing about this one is that I had tagged her on November 26, 2023 (yes, 2023; that is not a typo). So she will have collected 20 months of data! 44 was a v-notched, non-berried female when I tagged her, and when she was recaptured, she had a healthy clutch of eggs. Both Jeff and Zac removed the loggers from the females and will mail them to me so that we can look at their thermal records.

These two recaptures are a great reminder that we can’t do this project without the generous support of the fishers and the fishery – not just in LFA 38, but also in LFAs 36, 34, 35, and in Maine. Thank you to all of you who have helped in some way with our tagged lobster studies. I’ll let you know what the thermal data look like when we get them! As always, email me with questions: [email protected]

08/09/2025

Time for another drifter update!

If you recall, the team released four drifters on Aug 3, at places we had previously released drifters, to see if they followed the same path. As you can see, they have moved quite a distance from Grand Manan. L7 and L9 stuck together, but L10 went south of them, while L12 moved north.

What we wanted to also look at was how these “drifts” compared to those from drifters released in the same spots, in July. Well….first we will look at the L7 drifter. It circled around in the Grand Manan basin for a bit, and then made its way over towards Tiverton. In July, we deployed this same drifter at the same spot on July 12. It went around White Head, spent some time around Kent Island, and then made its way to Machias and then down the Maine coast. This was a longer deployment, but you can see on the map that even after five days, it had already committed to moving SW of Grand Manan.

L12, on the other hand, has headed north. We released it north of the Whistle, and it went to the Wolves, and then north of the Wolves, and tonight is heading straight into Beaver Harbour. We wanted to compare this one with L9’s July deployment. This drifter was also released north of the Whistle, and it went to the Wolves also, but this one drifted quite far east and southeast, and ended up over by Digby. Again, this was a longer deployment, but even after five days it was already more than halfway to Nova Scotia.

We don’t have space to show you, but L7 and L10 also went to different places than their predecessors released at the same spots.

So: what have we learned from this set of drifters? Location of release does not have a whole lot of influence on where drifters end up. There are likely seasonal changes in currents, and the tides will play a role as well. We currently have four drifters out there, and will let you know their paths. There is so much to learn!

Stay tuned: the next facebook post will be about some exciting tagged lobster recaptures that we recently had!

08/03/2025

Well, this was a short experiment! Our final four drifters for this round have completed their deployments. Two of them (L12 and L7) ended up on Deer Island, one of them (L10) ended up on Campobello, and the remaining one (L11) was picked up behind Spruce Island by someone and carried by boat to Deer Island (we would love to get that one back!). So to summarize for this set of seven drifters: they were released 2 nautical miles NE of Fish Head on Grand Manan. Two went aground at Fish Head within 24 hours, and the other five went to either Deer Island or Campobello. This pattern is quite different from what we have seen before (mostly to Nova Scotia or down the Maine coast). We are now on our next set of deployments. The team released four drifters today, at places where we have previously let drifters go. The previous drifters have gone to Maine, to Nova Scotia, and to the Wolves. We will follow these over the next week and see what they bring us! Stay tuned!

07/31/2025

Drifter update: And then there were four…

As promised, here is the first update our multi-drifter deployment. You already know that two of them grounded out at Fish Head on Grand Manan within 24 hours. Yesterday, drifter L9 beached itself in Herring Cove, Campobello Island – our team went and retrieved it. The remaining four drifters continue to be carried by currents northwards of Campobello. You can see on the map where the five drifters were yesterday morning. L9 (the Herring Cove drifter) is the southernmost one. You can also see the pathway that L10 took to get to where it is now on the second map. So far, the remaining four drifters seem to be sticking fairly close together. More drifter updates will be forthcoming!

We have had a few suggestions for what to call these drifters, and I encourage folks to continue to think of fun names for them - email me at [email protected].

In other research news, the team has been carrying out surveys for whales when the weather conditions (and fog) are suitable. Below is a map showing their survey track on July 30 in our research vessel, Xiphias. So far on surveys, they have seen some humpback whales and porpoises. They are out this morning again, and have reported that they have already seen some Atlantic white-sided dolphins, which can be very fun to watch. We will keep you updated on this and future surveys!

07/29/2025

And they’re off!

If you have been following our posts about research this summer, you will know that we have been deploying surface drifters to mimic where larval lobsters might be carried by currents while they are in their planktonic phase, floating at the surface for a few weeks. You may also have seen that our drifters seem to go all over the place: some to Nova Scotia, some down the Grand Manan Channel to Maine, others circling Machias for a bit, and one went to Maces Bay and back. Although…we have now had three of them end up very close to a place called Delaps Cove on the Nova Scotia coast (close to Digby Gut)….hmmm….

Well, now we are trying to imagine what would happen if a female released many of her larvae in one location. So, yesterday afternoon the team deployed seven drifters at the same time, 2 nautical miles north-east of Swallowtail (see them all in a line in the photo and on the map). As of this morning, we had two aground in Whale Cove, and five that have headed around the top of Grand Manan and into the Channel. We will follow these for the next week or so, and keep you posted on whether the remaining five stick together or not!

As always, email Heather with questions: [email protected]

07/24/2025

A tale of four drifters…

I promised an update on our drifter project, and here it is!

We released 4 drifters from around Grand Manan between July 12 and 15, letting them go to see where the currents would carry them, imagining they were acting like larval lobsters. We try to make sure that they don’t get so far away from us that we can’t retrieve them for another deployment – and we don’t want to leave them drifting in the ocean forever. Well, today was a big day for retrievals because our team had to go from Grand Manan down the channel to Maine to collect the “L7” drifter, then back to the island and over to Nova Scotia to pick up L4 (which had grounded out at Delaps Cove) and L9 (close to Digby Gut). The first map below shows where the drifters were today (red circles) and the track of our research team aboard Xiphias, one of our research boats.

Now, here is the interesting part…what were the paths to where the drifters ended up? L4 was released from one of the deepest parts of the Bay, east of White Head….and ended up on the Nova Scotia shore. L9 ended up close to L4, but this drifter was deployed off the Whistle. L7 was let go off Long Island, and spent some time circling around Kent Island (perhaps spotted by the Bowdoin College students?), then drifted over to Machias Seal Island, where it circled again for a few days, and then it started heading straight SE down the Maine coast. L8 was released off Swallowtail, and this drifter headed around the top of the island into the channel (where we thought it would continue to head south to Maine). But no, it had a surprise for us and changed course to run up north around the Wolves and into Maces Bay before heading south again. It is still drifting (it passed by Grand Manan around midnight last night) and is now heading over to Nova Scotia.

So...what are we learning? That so far there is no clear pattern to where these drifters (pretending to be little lobsters) end up. From these deployments and the ones last year, it looks like most of our “drif-lobs-ters” end up in Maine waters or over on the Nova Scotia shore. But we are basing that statement on a small sample size, and so we will continue to send them out to see where they end up. Perhaps a pattern will emerge. More to come!

Also: we need a better name for these than “drif-lobs-ters”. If anyone has something creative to offer, please email me! [email protected].

07/12/2025

The hunt is on!

Lobsters have a long reproductive cycle. After a female lobster mates with a male in the summer, her eggs develop internally for a whole year until she spawns them the next summer. Spawning means that she extrudes the eggs outside of her body, and they will stick to the underside of her tail with a biological “glue”. The eggs will then spend another entire year developing while they are attached underneath the female’s tail. Finally, hatching happens in the third summer. Larval lobsters are fairly small (only 8 – 15 mm during their first 4 stages; they molt between each stage to get a little bigger). During these early stages, larval lobsters are not strong enough to swim, and are carried by surface currents for a few weeks to the locations where they will eventually settle to the bottom and grow into adult lobsters.

Part of our research involves finding locations where female lobsters are going to hatch their eggs, and then figuring out where the newly-hatched larval lobsters might be carried by the currents. To mimic where larval lobsters might go, we are deploying surface drifters (see photo) around Grand Manan, and then we can follow these as they are moved by currents and tides. Yesterday we tested two drifters, deploying them off the north end of Grand Manan. The map is a screenshot of the tracking platform we use to follow the drifters, and shows you how far Drifter #4 moved, in just 18 hours! We will be deploying additional drifters over the coming weeks, and will keep you posted on their paths.

Grand Manan Whale & Seabird Research Station

05/09/2026

03/14/2026

08/31/2025

08/19/2025

08/10/2025

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