Fisheries officials in Massachusetts don’t want anglers targeting great white sharks, especially not from public beaches, and they just approved new regulations to crack down on the practice ahead of the upcoming season. Under the new rules, which were recommended by the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries and approved by the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory on Thursday, land-based shark fishing with certain gear is now banned on Cape Cod and most of the surrounding coastline. Fishing with drones and other mechanized devices (like remote-control boats) is also banned statewide for all rod-and-reel fishing.
Massachusetts’s stricter rules build on existing state regulations, and officials say they will allow for better enforcement of those regs, according to the Boston Herald. Keeping great white sharks has been illegal in the Bay State since 2005, and emergency regulations enacted in 2015 further prohibited anglers from even targeting the species. But these rules have been difficult to enforce, since anglers who hook great whites could say they were targeting another shark or fish species. And sometimes they were.
Read Next: How to Cook a Great White Shark (And Get in Serious Trouble For It)
By banning land-based shark fishing along the sections of coastline where great white sharks are most abundant, officials have effectively closed that regulatory loophole. Jared Silva, fisheries policy analyst for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, clarifies that the crackdown is really a prohibition on certain kinds of gear, namely the wire leaders and big hooks that are needed to land great whites.
“It’s really the heavier gear we targeted: the 18-inch or greater wire or metal leader, and the 5/8 inch hook,” Silva tells Outdoor Life. “The guys that are fishing lighter gear on and around Cape Cod, they will be totally unaffected.”
He explains that the heavier gear that is now banned around Cape Cod and the surrounding coastline is really only needed to land great whites, and that most anglers would be unable to land a great white shark without it. Importantly, Silva says, anglers can still surf fish for other species in the areas where the stricter rules are in place, and they can even target other non-protected sharks (like threshers), as long as they aren’t using wire leaders longer than 18 inches or hooks larger than 5/8 inches.
The active ban stretches from the northernmost point of Plymouth Beach down to Cape Cod and around the Outer Cape, including all of Chatham Harbor and Monomoy Island. The coastal areas around South Cape and the Islands — which are known to hold fewer great whites but are home to other, legally catchable shark species — are excluded from the ban.
The approved regulations mirror some of the stricter rules that have been enacted in other coastal states, where shark fishing from shore is becoming a victim of its own popularity. The huge increase in surf anglers catching and posing with sharks “for the ‘Gram” has brought a lot of unwanted attention to what was once a secretive pastime.
“Land-based shark fishing has become one of the most overblown, ego-driven gong shows in fishing” OL fishing editor Joe Cermele wrote in 2022, after a popular beach town in New Jersey banned surf-fishing for sharks during the summertime. “All this commotion is destined to destroy the sport.”
It’s not just public sentiment, but public safety, that officials are concerned about, however. An incident that occurred on Cape Cod last fall is one example, and according to the Boston Herald, it is part of what precipitated the new rules that were approved by Massachusetts officials last week.
The Provincetown Independent reports that on Sept. 28 2024, there was a confrontation between surfers and a group of land-based anglers who were allegedly targeting a great white shark on LeCount Hollow Beach. The anglers had been chumming off the beach that morning, and they used a drone to send their hook, line, and bait (a dead bluefish) out over and past the surfers. The surfers called the police, claiming they saw a giant shark surface near them and that they’d gotten tangled in the anglers’ lines. No charges were filed, since the anglers had their licenses and said they were fishing for bass and stingrays, but the conflict shows how land-based shark fishing done wrong can be a threat, or a perceived threat, to public safety.
“There is a large contingent of anglers on social media that are looking for that viral video of them shark fishing, particularly for white sharks,” Massachusetts DMF policy analyst Jared Silva told the Boston Herald.
Read Next: Great White Shark Tales from Cape Cod’s Charter Boat Captains
Silva added that this is especially problematic during the summer months, when the height of tourist season coincides with peak great white shark activity around Cape Cod. Great whites have been returning in record numbers there since around 2015, and they like to hunt along the shallow beaches where both seals and humans are found.
“They can’t co-exist,” Silva said, referring to beachgoers and land-based shark anglers. “It’s a huge public safety issue.”
A clarification was made on April 11, 2025: A previous version of this article contained some confusing and potentially misleading statements about the rules that were enacted surrounding land-based shark fishing in Massachusetts. The new rules restrict the use of certain kinds of heavier gear in areas where great white sharks are common, and they do not prohibit anglers from surf fishing for other species with lighter gear. The article has been updated to include comments and explanations from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.