Uncaged: Meet Dan Pronk, Nantucket’s Lobsterman

It’s not hard to find Dan Pronk’s house on Nantucket - it’s the one surrounded by a literal wall of lobster traps on all four sides. But that’s only because it’s winter; in warmer months these traps are all laid in the waters southeast of the island, and their bounty feeds hungry tourists and locals alike.

Dan’s outside in his yard to greet me, wearing tattered clothes you might throw on to tend to such a thing, the thing being an eleven-foot high perimeter of lobster traps around your yard. But before we go any further, I ask Dan to explain how a lobster trap works because, while I’ve eaten my fair share of lobster, or as Dan calls them, “bugs,” I have no idea.

“This here is what they call the kitchen,” he says, pointing with some fingers streaked with dry blood to an area right inside the opening of the trap.

“Are you bleeding?” I ask.

“Probably.” He wipes it off with another finger.

“And here is where you put the bait.” His hand mimics the lobster going through the large hole in the trap, and points to a mirrored hole in the trap on the other side. “Now, the lobster can freely come and go at this point. But let’s say someone is behind him.” He moves his hand through the trap to the back. “This is called the parlor. Here is where he’ll stay, unless he’s small enough, or young enough, and then he can escape through this opening here.” Dan shows me a square opening in the back. He also points out the biodegradable fastenings on the cage that will deteriorate and free trapped lobster after so many weeks underwater, in case the trap is never lifted or somehow gets lost. In fact, Dan’s whole business of fishing is subject to an astounding amount of rules and regulations, some that have cost him plenty of diligence and a pretty penny to follow, but one thing is clear - he practices his trade with the utmost respect for the one thing some could argue he loves most - the ocean.

Just off from the walled-in yard is a cozy garage outfitted with a vintage wood stove in the corner, and all the tools you might need for over 20 years as a lobsterman. Rope pulleys hang from the ceiling, and a large wooden table is where Dan makes lobster traps from hand. Seafood signs and Trump for President paraphernalia decorate the walls. One could observe Dan’s created an efficient business for himself, and its true. Since moving to Nantucket in February of 2000 and briefly serving with the Fire Department, Dan explains how he’d much rather fish, a job where, out on the water, he is his own boss, licensing and regulations aside. His two matted Aussie Shepherds follow him as he shows me spliced pieces of rope complete with whale break-away points, and even being a cold day in late November, I spy some winter vegetables growing strong in his garden. “All the seaweed falls off the traps and fertilizes the ground,” he says. “I just till in the spring and have the best soil.”

Growing up in Marshfield, Massachusetts, Dan looked forward to taking out the boat with his dad any chance they got, after work and on weekends. “We were always catching something or digging something,” he says. As a part time job, Dan would bait hooks for cod fishing lines, sometimes as much as a mile long. He recalls buying an entire pick up truck full of surf clams to bait hooks at one point, and on the weekends if he was able to, he’d go out with the crew. The water was where he wanted to be.

Years later and nearly twenty years old, Dan and a childhood friend came to Nantucket “to chase waves and women,” he says with a laugh. His friend, Shawn Monaco married an island girl, and Dan eventually married her best friend. “We used to say these two girls were singing sirens from Greek Mythology - they lured us onto the rocks.” Divorced now yet amicable, Dan jokes that when his ex-wife passes his house, she waves… with her hand, not her middle finger.

The years that have since followed have been eventful, including a brief and unintentional stint on the other side of the law. If you’ve been on Nantucket long enough, you may remember two local men going to jail for “smuggling” whale ivory. It was during that same time, around 2010, that Dan dragged up a large and questionable bone formation in his lobster gear. In fact, dragging odd things up is one of his favorite perks of the job - an old pottery ale bottle dated back to 1860 being one of his prized possessions - but this, he couldn’t seem to identify. Loading it with the help of a friend into the back of his Ford F350 at the Madaket pier, he couldn’t close his tailgate. Someone in a home nearby approached Dan and said, “You know what you have there? It’s a whale skull.” 

“As soon as he said it, you could tell, and I was like, ‘Whoa, it is!’”

Dan drove around with it for a couple days, “showing it off to everybody.” Eventually, someone approached him and asked if he wanted to sell it. 

“I said, ‘Yeah, what’s it worth?’ A few days later the environmental police were at Dan’s door, and they arrested him.

“My story is a little different from the two men arrested for smuggling whale ivory - both those guys knew what they were doing.” Dan’s charges were eventually dropped, but it’s this type of hot water - pun intended - that Dan seems to find himself in every so often, not to the extent that he is doing anything illegal, but he isn’t afraid to rustle a few feathers, resulting in Dan becoming somewhat of unlikely advocate for the environment.

In fact, nature is one of the things he loves most about his job. Dan describes mornings on his boat where the water is so still it’s like mirrored glass, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a pod of dolphins gently lap by. “You just stop and you’re like, ‘Wow!’” And as for whales, he’s seen plenty, but none have ever gotten too close to the boat. And he’s also seen them dead, with sharks taking bites out of them. Dan explains that whales die for all sorts of reasons, but since the erection of the wind turbines just to the south of our island, whale death has escalated to astonishing numbers. “I think it’s up to 76 whales that have washed up, and not one of them has had a piece of rope on it.” 

What Dan is referring to is the total number of whale deaths since construction began for Vineyard Wind, but, unfortunately, the cause of whale death is, for the most part, often indeterminable. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (aka NOAA) the total whale deaths along the United States east coast from Maine to Florida tallied at 37 for the year of 2023, a number nearly doubled from the previous year’s total of 19. Blame mostly points to impact from shipping vessels, however the seismic effects from the offshore wind related drilling are, for the most part, still widely unknown. To make matters more confusing and vague, many invested parties are openly accepting money from Vineyard Wind, including the well known fishermen’s advocate the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, not to mention the Town of Nantucket, which accepted $16 Million as part of a so-called Good Neighbor Agreement that essentially prohibits the Town to talk negatively about the project.

As a lifelong fisherman familiar with Nantucket’s waters, Dan’s been a regular at meetings to protest the implementation of wind turbines for nearly seven years now, something that requires him to go off island and stay in a hotel to attend, just so that his voice can be heard.

“Years ago, going to these meetings, there were different groups of people,” Dan says. “Over the years, those groups have gone down to two - the fishermen and the wind farm people. Those other groups became one because they were bought off. We're not being bought off.”

Dan explains that he believes the sonar used to build and anchor the turbines is causing constant acoustic problems in the water. “They say these things are eventually going to attract fish, but if you go out to dinner somewhere, do you want Ozzy Ozborne blasting in your ear while you try to eat? They’ve already done studies that the electromagnetism in the power lines scares away lobsters and deforms crab larvae.” 

Dan admits he’s gotten into a few heated discussions on the internet about it, and on some platforms, has been banned. “I state facts to people and people can't handle the facts.”

Dan goes on further to explain that the boats used to construct the wind turbines are “the size of the high school, burning diesel fuel 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Depending on which style of turbine they're using, they're going 230 feet down into the seabed and they're not drilling, they are pounding - pile driving. My opinion on this whole thing? This wind farm stuff is a front for oil exploration. Call me a conspiracy theorist,” he laughs. “I smoke a bit of grass.” 

For now, Dan can still be found downtown, selling his “bugs” directly off his boat at either the town pier or behind the angler’s club, something he advertises on the Nantucket Consignments Facebook Page, but if you have a hankering for lobsters, you can just text him at (508) 364-0518. 

“I'd rather be at the beach with my dogs than sitting downtown selling lobsters, but the money is better and it's nice talking to people.” Dan says he’s not a people person per se, but when he’s meeting his customers face to face, he actually enjoys it. “Some people say it’s like coming to a show,” he says.

And the actual act of catching lobsters is something Dan really enjoys, saying that when the fishing is hot, it almost feels like being at a rave, not like he’s ever been to one, but he’s seen them on TV. “We’ll be out there with the music blasting, and we’ve got these red lights on because you can see better with them than with white lights, and there may or may not be some disco lights on the boat.” Dan laughs. “When we’re catching lobsters, there’s nowhere else I wanna be.”

Photography by Tucker Finerty