Article April 19, 2010 ISSUE

THE SHARK WE SAVED

BY WILLIAM DEANE

A FEW YEARS AGO, while I was on a dive trip to the "Big Island" of Hawaii, we heard talk of a shark that was unable to eat because a large fishing hook was lodged in the back of its mouth. About 20 days earlier, a fisherman had caught the unwanted shark and simply cut the line, leaving it defenseless and sentencing the five-foot-long predator to a probable death by starvation.

A few of us who were diving in the area thought we might be able to free the shark in some way. I'm an experienced diver, and my buddies were divemasters who knew those waters very well. They'd already been down to the cave the shark was resting in, seeing it firsthand, so we knew we needed to use wisdom and skill moving forward.