MOSSEL BAY NEWS - A Mossel Bay NSRI volunteer managed the difficult task of cutting off a strip of plastic bound around a shark.

The blue plastic originates from packets of bait used by fishermen. They discard the plastic overboard.

JC Roos came to the rescue of the shark during the filming for television's Discovery Shark Week in Mossel Bay.

He had been asked to provide medical support for the film crew on board Discovery's vessel, Blue Pointer.

The Discovery channel's Shark Week is an annual event in which sharks are studied and filmed. This year it took place from 11 to 18 July.

The plastic strip was wrapped around the great white shark near its gills.

The crew on board Blue Pointer noted that the plastic had caused grooves in the shark's skin, so it had probably been there for some time. Leaving the shark in this condition would result in its death.

Roos said: "Getting into the water with all the shark activity around Seal Island, offshore of Mossel Bay, was not an option and getting the vessel close enough to this particular shark seemed an almost impossible task."

Bait
The crew agreed that luring the shark to the vessel with bait could work.

Roos noted: "Some years ago, I was involved in a successful disentanglement operation, so I contacted my NSRI station commander, André Fraser, and asked if he could organise the whale disentanglement kit for us. It was quite late in the afternoon, so arrangements were made for the kit to be delivered to Blue Pointer the following day.

Inspecting the equipment, Roos realised they would have to improvise.

They rigged up a system, using a normal boat hook and pole, the disentanglement knife, shackles, rope and some floating buoys.

Roos said: "The knife blade is quite short, so we decided that the risk of injuring the shark was worth it in order to save its life." Fortunately the crew sighted the shark again.

On the third attempt to free the shark, Roos was successful.

"It was not an easy task with all the shark's thrashing and chaos and I couldn't hold on to the pole. I knew I had a positive hook-up but wasn't sure where, due to all the thrashing. The shark took off with immense force, the rope attached to the pole went slack. Then it was tense again, and then it went slack. Something gave. The rope and pole were retrieved on to the boat and we could see the plastic floating to the surface. We did it!" - Courtesy of www.nsri.org (Article shortened.)