Coast Guard Suspends Controversial Plan To Remove Navigational Buoys

The U.S. Coast Guard has officially suspended a controversial plan to remove hundreds of navigational buoys from New England waters, including several around Nantucket, after receiving a deluge of opposition.

"After receiving over 3,200 public comments, the Coast Guard will be conducting further analysis of the aids to navigation (ATON) system," the federal agency announced late Tuesday night. "There will be no changes to ATON in relation to the proposal until further analysis is complete."

The Coast Guard maintains more than 5,600 aids to navigation in its Northeast district, but in an effort to "advance a modern approach," it proposed in early 2025 to remove 350 of them. Among those were several navigational buoys around the island, including the NB buoy outside of the Nantucket Harbor channel, the Cross Rip Shoal buoy, the Tuckernuck Shoal buoy #3, the Muskeget Channel buoy, and the Point Rip buoy #11 at Great Point.

Nantucket Harbormaster Sheila Lucey and a handful of island charter boat captains raised concerns about the plan, and they were among the thousands who submitted formal comments to the U.S. Coast Guard, ultimately prompting it to back away from the controversial plan on Tuesday.

“We are extremely appreciative of the public’s input on this important project, and our team’s hard work, analysis, and conclusions were reinforced by the outstanding feedback we received from our maritime stakeholders,” said Rear Adm. Michael Platt, the Northeast Coast Guard District Commander, in a press release. “The Northeast Coast Guard District will continue to ensure a safe, secure, and efficient Maritime Transportation System. We remain focused on shaping the future of our waterways, ensuring a modern aids to navigation system, and facilitating commerce vital to economic prosperity and strategic mobility.”

Lucey - a former Coast Guard master chief herself - was among the first to voice her opposition to the buoy removal plan.

"I’m going to request that they don’t discontinue any of them," Lucey told the Current in May 2025. "I think each of them has significant value to the boaters in and around Nantucket. We get such a wide range of boaters and boating experience, and the types of vessels we get. We have small recreational boats without any GPS at all that rely on their compass and getting to the NB buoy to realize they’re at the top of the channel. So I think we want to keep everything we have in place."

Matthew Stuck, the First Coast Guard District’s chief of waterways management, stated earlier this year that the 350 navigational buoys targeted for removal in the northeast represented about 6 percent of the 5,640 federally-maintained aids to navigation around New England.

“We’re actively adjusting short-range aids to work better and more sustainably given today’s navigation tools and methods,” Stuck said at the time. “As part of this effort, the First Coast Guard District has assessed AtoN system modernization options over the last two years. Identifying buoys with the highest navigational significance and those providing less navigational value established the baseline to engage the public for feedback on this proposal.”

Several navigational buoys around Nantucket have broken free from their moorings in recent years before washing up on the island. The retrieval operations have involved Army National Guard units and the Coast Guard, featuring Chinook helicopters to remove the buoys from the beaches and large Coast Guard buoy tenders to return them to their original location.