Poor nurse shark - Yucab

[MMM]

Came upon a nurse shark today at Yucab which had a hook embedded in its mouth and some attached line. Nobody in our group had any line cutters. Kind souls may wish to keep an eye out for this thing and at least try and cut the trailing line. I couldn't really see how much there was as it was tucked under a ledge. On a better note, I saw a very, very young turtle (maybe 6 inches long) making his way along the reef. Reminded me of the movie "Finding Nemo".

 

[CuzzA]

That shark will likely shake the hook. Don't go sticking your hand around a sharks mouth and piss it off by yanking on a hook.

The Truth About Leaving A Fishing Lure In A Fish's Mouth (New Study)

The results of this “crankbait left hooked in fish’s mouth” came back pretty shocking!

These fish were all somehow finding ways to self-release (or most likely shake out) well set crankbait treble hooks in a matter of days. In fact, the barbless hooks usually came out of the fish’s mouth and hit the surface in 24 hours or less!

And even the deeply hooked crankbaits with barbs were usually fully free from the fish’s mouth in just a couple of days!

Pullen said the pike hooked in the lower jaw actually took longer to shed the lure than those hooked deeply near the back of the tongue.

Chris’s theory is that the hook in the jaw is less of an annoyance than one that is deeper and impacting their ability to forage, so the fish doesn’t use as much energy to try to release it from their mouth.

“We have a pretty good idea now, for pike at least, with crankbaits, what likely happens with the lure,” he said. “And that is faster than people might think, that fish is able to get that hook out.”

Pullen concluded from his study that anglers wanting to release a fish safely are likely better off cutting the line on a deep hooked pike then trying to pull out the hook itself.

It appears that fish are pretty good at finding ways to remove these hooks while under water! Pretty amazing for an animal without any hands or fingers!

Finally, in the second part of the study where Chris followed and compared the pike with hooks/lures in their mouth vs the normal pikes (he tracked their behavior in terms of how they dispersed around the lake, how they acted, and how they ate), he found very little difference in how the hooked vs unhooked pike acted.

This would explain why so many anglers have stories of catching the same fish in the same hour. Apparently, fish might feel some annoyance with the hook in their mouth (enough to find ways to shake it off), but it certainly isn’t affecting their ability to eat and to go about their daily life.​

 

[MMM]

I was thinking more of cutting the trailing line to avoid entaglement.

That shark will likely shake the hook. Don't go sticking your hand around a sharks mouth and piss it off by yanking on a hook.

 

[deepsea21]

I wouldn't be overly concerned about the shark. It's not rare to find one with a hook in its mouth and, rest assured, the shark will live far longer than it takes the hook to rust away or work itself out. Specifically, the entire hook doesn't need to rust away, just enough to rust away the barb on it usually at which point it will work its way out. As far as the line is concerned, if it's only a few feet long no worries as the shark was obviously stronger than the line.