Occurred on July 24, 2023 / Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA

: "We were made aware of a Nurse Shark in distress at a local man-made reef here in Destin Florida. The Artificial Reef system is located at Beasley Park on the island in Ft Walton Beach. It sits in about 18-22 feet of water. Another diver reported that he and his dive buddy came across a large Nurse Shark that was trapped and had a hook in its mouth and tethered to one of the reef structures. They had made several attempts to free the animal with no luck. So I and a fellow diver (Diver Dan) headed to Beasley to see if we could help...

We located the Shark very quickly and we were able to cut the steel leader that was attached to the hook and free the shark from its entanglement.

We did lose our pliers as they were pinched on the leader when it left in a hurry.

Hopefully, the hook will eventually rust out and the remaining leader will fall out as well.

Thanks for watching!