The Bronze Whaler Incident

It was a dark, gloomy day out at Suicide Reef, diving with Toc and Alex. Despite the conditions, the diving was great. We'd found some amazing cave systems absolutely teeming with life, and I'd taken a nice-sized cape knifejaw and clipped it to my stringer.

Toc headed off to scout some deeper marks, and I was about to follow when Alex mentioned he wasn't feeling the best and wanted to head back in. Mid-conversation, I felt a massive tug on my buoy line that sent me flying backwards into the water. A second later, another tug dragged me a couple of metres. My first thought was that a shark was taxing me, but something was off. Sharks take the fish and leave. This one kept pulling. After a few strange moments, it clicked: the shark was somehow stuck to my buoy line.

We called everyone over and worked up the courage to get close enough to see what had happened. That's when we spotted it. The stringer had become lodged inside the shark's mouth. It had gone for the knifejaw and swallowed the stringer along with it.
That left us with a horrible problem. We couldn't just cut the float free and swim away, because the shark would be left dragging it at the surface until it died. If this shark was going to survive, we had to get that stringer out.

We made several attempts to free it, using our spearguns to try and pull the stringer loose, but it wouldn't budge. Then Toc suggested a new plan: Alex and I would grab hold of the shark and flip it upside down, which puts sharks into a docile state, while he went in from the front and worked his speargun into its mouth to hook the stringer out. Easier said than done. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we knew we needed to get it somewhere we could work on it properly.
So we made the call: swim the shark 800 metres back to shore. The shallower we got, the harder it fought, but between the three of us we got it onto the beach and worked as fast as we could. Every minute counted now.

We tried desperately to remove the stringer, but nothing was working. Our last option was the stringer itself. It was steel-cored, but our dive knives would have to do. We went at it, and finally, it gave. The shark was free.
We got it back into the water and, for a few tense moments, waited. Then it kicked. Then it kicked again, harder. And then it was gone, swimming off strong.
It was an extremely rare situation, one I'd never heard of before and hope to never see again. We did the best we could with what we had, and in the end the shark swam off safely. One hell of a day at Suicide Reef.

Watch the full video here