Massachusetts has clamped down on shore-based white shark fishing at Nantucket, and one of the loudest voices in favour of the rule is the angler whose viral catch helped trigger it.
Elliot Sudal landed a white shark of roughly eight to nine feet from a beach on the island's south shore on 7 June. The Instagram reel of the release passed half a million views. He says the fish was never the target and that, in more than a decade of shore shark fishing off Nantucket, it was his first white.
"Basically, I caught that great white and the video went viral," Sudal told the Cape Cod Times in a written response by Instagram. "I've caught 2,000-plus sharks off the beach here and that was the first (white shark) I've caught."
The Division of Marine Fisheries filed its emergency order on 31 July, extending to Nantucket the tackle restrictions that have applied to Cape Cod Bay and the Outer Cape since 2025. It runs for 90 days and the agency has flagged that it could become permanent for the 2027 season.
Sudal backs it without much hedging.
"I'd rather never shark fish again than a kid ever get bit," he wrote, saying the regulations "make sense."
That endorsement does not extend to second-guessing his own catch. "I stand by doing everything correctly in that situation," he said. The hook came out immediately and the shark swam off. In June he told the Nantucket Current: "By no means was I targeting that white, you can't control what picks up your bait."
His frustration is aimed at the imitators. Sudal has criticised people trying to build a profile as "fishing influencers" by deliberately going after white sharks — precisely the trend DMF cited in its advisory.
The agency's case rests on two risks at once. "These emergency regulations are about protecting both public safety and one of Massachusetts' most iconic marine species," DMF spokesperson Danielle Burney said. "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."
It is a tackle rule rather than a shark-fishing ban. On restricted shorelines, a hook with an inside gap over 5/8 inch may not be used with a wire or metal leader longer than 18 inches. Brown sharks and sand tigers — species DMF does not treat as a threat to swimmers, and which are largely fished at night — remain fair game.
The island was originally exempt for lack of evidence that anyone was targeting whites from its beaches. That argument collapsed on 18 July, when Nobadeer Beach closed temporarily after anglers went after white sharks near swimmers and a surf school. Nantucket's public safety officials asked the state to expand the rule two days later.
Federal law draws the line in a different place. Rachel Hager of NOAA Fisheries told Outside that deliberately catching a great white is illegal, "but they are occasionally caught by accident in a variety of fisheries for other species." Permitted anglers are an exception: "In the Atlantic, recreational fishermen who hold the appropriate permits are allowed to intentionally fish for white sharks with rod and reel gear, as long as they release the shark immediately without removing the shark from the water and without further harming the shark," she said.
The video, in which the shark is worked into the shallows by the tail before the hook is pulled, sits uneasily against that last condition.
Shark guide Tanner Mansell, asked by Outside to assess the footage, opposes baiting sharks from the beach on the same grounds DMF does — it brings them in near people. He nonetheless judged the handling sound, and said the timing was the thing that saved the animal.
"The speed of this is the most important aspect of it," Mansell said. "He didn't wait around to take a photo or something, he got on it. This guy knew what he was doing."
Nathan Skerritt, who helped drag the shark clear and free it, played down his role: "I'm just one of the boys that happened to be there and got to reel the beauty in."
The order expires in late October, once the beaches have emptied. Making it stick into 2027 is a decision the state has yet to take.
