The island had an exemption. It does not any more. On Friday 31 July the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries filed emergency regulations pulling Nantucket's shoreline into the state's shore-based shark fishing restrictions, a rule that has covered much of Cape Cod since 2025.
What it bans is a tackle combination rather than a species. From Nantucket's shore, anglers can no longer fish metal or wire leaders of 18 inches or more alongside hooks with a gap wider than five-eighths of an inch. That is white shark gear. Lighter rigs for brown sharks and sand tiger sharks are untouched, and catch-and-release fishing for those species carries on as before.
The order stands for 90 days, with DMF weighing whether to make it permanent for 2027.
"These emergency regulations are about protecting both public safety and one of Massachusetts' most iconic marine species," said Danielle Burney, director of communications for the state executive office of energy and environmental affairs. "Shore-based fishing that targets white sharks can draw them closer to beaches where people are swimming, while also increasing the risk of injury or death to the sharks themselves."
The expansion, Burney said, "will help keep our beaches safe, supports shark conservation and allows anglers to continue fishing for other recreational species."
One episode pushed it over the line. Burney told the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror that an incident on 18 July involving island angler Elliot Sudal forced the temporary closure of Nobadeer Beach, with anglers working white sharks near swimmers and a surf school. DMF's advisory referred to "several documented incidents involving shore-based anglers targeting and catching white sharks on Nantucket and producing dangerous circumstances for swimmers and beachgoers", and described an "acute public safety risk".
Sudal has been at the centre of the island's shark summer. On 7 June he landed a nearly nine-foot white shark in the Nantucket surf, straddled it to free the hook and posted the clip. "Hooks out and back on her way in 15 seconds, not sure how to do it better," he wrote on Instagram. A veteran angler and boat captain who has caught and tagged hundreds of sharks, Sudal said in a social post that it was the first white shark he had landed in over ten years.
Footage of that kind is precisely what the 2025 rule was drafted to head off.
At the Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission meeting that approved the original Cape Cod restrictions in March 2025, DMF fishery policy analyst Jared Silva was blunt. "It's a huge public safety issue," he said. He pointed to the online market for the imagery: "There's a lot of social media clout that can be gotten from this, and we've kind of heard through the grapevine that Massachusetts is the hotbed, or is going to be the hotbed for this activity." On baiting for white sharks beside summer beach crowds, Silva said simply: "They can't coexist."
In a memo dated 24 March 2025, DMF director Daniel McKiernan urged officials to take "decisive action to enhance our regulatory program before fishing activity further expands and increases the potential for conflict and public safety issues."
The reason for regulating gear rather than behaviour is evidentiary. Deliberately attracting or capturing a white shark is already illegal in Massachusetts, but proving that an angler meant to do it is difficult. Take away the tackle and the intent argument disappears.
There was dissent. Tim Brady, the only commission member to vote against the 2025 rule, raised the position of anglers legitimately chasing other big sharks. "I understand the intent, and I understand the potential user group conflict, but are we also preventing somebody who's targeting a different large shark species, which they can target?" he asked. He also doubted how readily a white shark could be pulled in from a beach.
DMF shark biologist Greg Skomal disagreed on that point. "I would argue that it's quite easy to target a white shark, particularly along the eastward facing beaches of Cape Cod," he said. "The abundance that we see out there is mind-blowing. And they are quite close to shore." The rule, in his view, gives Massachusetts Environmental Police "the teeth they need to be able to enforce this activity."
Environmental Police Lt. Matthew Bass said enforcement would concentrate on "those white shark fishers coming from around the country looking for that viral video."
Nantucket's original exemption was not an oversight. The island has a long history of shore-based fishing for other shark species, and DMF saw little evidence anyone was hunting white sharks off its beaches. Chumming limits between sunrise and sunset, and the prohibition on drones and remote-controlled craft for dropping baits, already applied. What shifted over this summer was how many white sharks came into the wash, and how many phones were pointed at them.