Reducing North Atlantic Right Whale Entanglements off of the Coast of Maine

If ropes are removed from the North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) geographic range off the coast of Maine, and this population is tracked, monitored and surveyed on a more regular basis, then the number of man-caused mortalities, like entanglement, will decrease because the quantity of vertical fishing line/rope threats are decreased significantly and progress or regression will be trackable. This project will be done so over a year and based off of the collected data- we will determine if further hands-on help is needed. Leading up to the first month of this plan, we will ensure that all of the staffing and participants are aware of the project plan and are available. During the first month of the project, January 2027 will be focused on the training of the researchers and participants involved in any field data collection. During the end of January, we will start to overlook data from previous years to see the number of those that have already died in previous years due to entanglements or other man-caused mortalities. In February we will continue to look over data collected from past years. In February, we will hold community meetings throughout the fishing communities of Maine to get more information from their end, and to provide more education based on the overall issue and the plan for what should be done going forward based off of the data from previous years and in upcoming years. During March we will conduct an aerial survey and a boat survey (different days), to collect data on any calves observed throughout the geographic range off of the coast of Maine. In April we will do the same thing as March (an aerial survey and a survey by boat). In the boat surveys, we will be focusing on surveying how many vertical lines are found throughout the geographic range of the NARW and how many nets are usually casted throughout this region. During May and June, we will start to create models in Excel based off of these data sets in order to compare it to data from years into the proposed project. Since this is in between the months of the calving season for NARW, it will give more time for the research and putting all of the collected research together. We will also continue to look over any additional past data sets that have not been looked over and analyzed yet. July-October we will start to analyze the data that we have received throughout the project and start to format it and compare it with the older data sets. We will also start to put our findings and report together. In November we will conduct another aerial survey and a boat survey (different days accordingly), to collect data on any calves observed throughout the geographic range off of the coast of Maine- since this will be the start of the next calving season. During the boat survey we will work on replacing all of the vertical line found with rope-less fishing devices. In December we will conduct two last surveys throughout the region and finish our data analyzation process from our collected data. In the boat survey, we will ensure all of the vertical lines are removed throughout the geographic range. We will also finish up our final report on the issue, and create models in Excel based off all of the data to compare with previous data to see any obvious trend