Here is the before picture. Sorry I didn't have any during or after pics, but my camera was clipped to a d-ring and my friends (3 witnesses) didn't come close enough to get the camera. Besides, the last thing on my mind, after the first pics for proof for DLNR, was not taking pics, but the welfare of the shark.
This is why this is the dive to end all dives, please bear with me as the story is a bit long, but I promise it is worth it.
My friend and I planned on going diving Sunday, to an undisclosed location. All was set and when I woke up in the morning I was ready to go, but my friends dog had gotten out so there was a chance we weren't going. I also didn't feel 100%, bad for some reason still felt we "needed" to go. Well, he found the dog about 20 minutes later and we left out maybe 1.5 hours later than we had originally planned. We called 2 of his friends that had planned on coming with us and they were still up for meeting us.
We arrived and there were no divers anywhere (place doesn't get dived much). Beautiful day though. We setup, decided on our plan, and got in. About 10 minutes into our dive we noticed a very old, unatteded gill net with buoys probably 8 feet underwater, mabye 50 yards long and covered with algae, and lots and lots of holes in it. We kept swimming along (by the way viz was only 20 feet max) and about 2/3 along the net we start to see something out of the fog. It turned out to be a 5 foot female whitetip reef shark. Poor girl was completely wrapped in the net from heat to tail, as the picture shows. Well, I took a couple of pics to have proof for DLNR when I called and then clipped off my camera and pulled out my shears. I started cutting a bit and my shears just kept getting snagged and one of the buddies was helping to. After about 2 minutes I gave up on the shears and put them up. I turned to my friend and he shrugged his shoulders as to say "were not making any progress, we just can't help it". Well, when he shrugged his shoulders I felt the same way for about 1-2 seconds and it just hurt too much to think of that beautiful shark dying like that, starving to death in that net. By the way, later on the surface, my buddy would say that he saw that whole process in my eyes that he knew I was not gonna give up.
Well, with new resolve I dumped all the air out of my wing (so I could get footing on the ground (not reef, sandy bottom) and moved back in with my knife this time. I keep telling my wife that watching all those stinking Discovery channel specials with my daughter serves a purpose. I left the shark's head restrained (my buddies watched from a few feet away this time). I slowly started cutting the net apart from just behind the gills back to the tail. Once I got to within a foot of the tail I went back and cut the rope around its gills. I, next, took a good hold of its body and tail, pushed its head further into the net (to restrain it) and so that I could free its tail, then in one motion, once its tail was free, rolled it onto its back and tucked the rear of the shark under my arm. I just held it there for a minute and rubbed its belly, both in amazement at the creature I was holding, and to make sure it wasn't cut up from the ropes anywhere. All looked good and finally pushed it away and let it go. It turned around to look at me for a few seconds and just sat motionless. After that it turned and took off.
I can honestly say that even though the viz was bad, the current was not to good that out of over 500 dives THIS one was the absolute best so far.
By the way. Called DLNR and they came to clear out the net. They were very happy with our call and the shark was free.
