Women in Fisheries: Chelsea Nunan

By Melissa Waterman

Chelsea Nunan, 30, lobsters from Cape Porpoise. She is the fifth generation in her family to go to sea for a living. When she was eight, she began lobstering during the summer with her father Chris Nunan. The summer she was 12 she lobstered with a family friend and at the end of that season, she had earned enough money to buy an 18-foot skiff from him. Chelsea was hooked.

Chelsea Nunan at the dock.

“I enjoyed it most of the time. Sometimes I did want to go have fun in the summer,” she laughed.

During high school Nunan fished on the weekends and throughout the summer, bringing her growing number of traps in when fall rolled around. After graduating she bought what she called “project boats” to work on and fish from, most of which she acknowledged were never finished.

“I moved to Blue Hill and fished with a guy from Stonington for a few years,” she said. When she returned to Cape Porpoise she was able to buy a 32-foot Holland and begin lobstering on her own. “You have to be smart about your money. You can’t know what the price is going to be any year,” she said.

In 2020 at the start of the pandemic Nunan purchased a 34-foot Wayne Beal

boat – another “project boat – and her offshore lobstering permit. It wasn’t the best time to begin restoring the boat. “It was hard to do the work because it was hard to get the supplies. But I enjoyed it. With boat work, you either love it or hate it!” she said.

Two years ago Nunan bought a 36-foot Wayne Beal, which is the apple of her eye. “I love this one. The size is better. It doesn’t burn an outrageous amount of fuel. She’s named Fantasea,” she said.

Lobstering may be hard, relentless work but for Nunan, it remains her calling. “There’s always a change, every day is different. I like the challenge of it – what the lobsters are doing, when they are going to move,” she said. “Things don’t always come easy. Some years are good years, some years are bad.”

Nunan doesn’t spend much time thinking about being a female lobsterman in a fishery still largely filled with men. In part that comes from the Nunan family’s long history on the water in Cape Porpoise, and in part from the fact that Nunan is a good lobsterman. “I grew up here so other lobstermen are kind of used to having me around,” she said. “Sometimes some don’t know how to take me.”

Nunan is expecting her first child, a girl, this June and is taking a break from lobstering this year. With a daughter on the way, she recalls her own entry into the lobstering world, overseen carefully by her father. “When she is old enough to go with me, that will be cool. I’m excited to teach her,” she said.