Shark with hook in mouth 'would have starved to death'

Little bit of news vid from the bbc
HERE

Good news for the shark, not so good for angling maybe.

Blows apart those theories that if you cut the hook off it will rot away in a day or two. Yes it was a big hook in this case, but infection had set in first. I just wonder whether there's some development work to be done on hooks yet.

---------------------- as an aside.....

I get worried when perch start taking them down with the bait as their kidneys are so close to the back of their throat. It's too easy to damage one terminally. I normally change baits to avoid them, but they still remain one of my favourite fish.

think its why most people fishing for sharks use bronze hooks now. they are meant to dissolve pretty quick.

I read a few of the stories but never saw anything about infection, just that it lost its appetite. It must just be the cynic in me that thought they carried out the ground-breaking, first-of-its-kind-in-the-UK surgery because the hook gave them a good excuse. Maybe the money and effort would have been be spent trying to stop commercial fishermen killing all the sharks in the open ocean.....

alan said:

bronze hooks

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I remember hearing a few years ago now that bronze hooks, such as the old fashioned bronze treble hooks, dissolve inside a pike's mouth. I removed all the stainless trebles on my lures and replaced them with bronze after hearing that.

Wrong. We should all be using stainless steel hooks if we were REALLY serious about not harming the fish. Only SS hooks can remain in a fish without rotting away and so poisoning it to some degree.

You have to ask why the BBC showed that clip given their constant anti angling stance. Was it as a demonstration of the triumph of skill in removing the hook or a furtive "look at the damage angling does to fish."

Perhaps I do them an injustice in thinking it was more anti angling propoganda but just as the BBC will not take heed of a contra view then I will consider it as another dig at us the angler.

Well done the Brummies in saving the sharks life.

MarkTheSpark said:

Little bit of news vid from the bbc


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8271523.stm

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Yes that BBC link focuses on Birmingham....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8271409.stm

This one tells a bit more and is from Weymouth Dorset.

BBC Anti-Angling said:

Surgery has been performed on a shark at a Dorset sealife centre - in what is thought to be the first such procedure out of water.

Florence, a 6ft (1.8m) nurse shark, was taken ill at Weymouth Sea Life Park.

She was anaesthetised while still in her tank, then lifted on to an operating table. Sea water was pumped across her gills to keep her breathing.

A rusty fishing hook that had become lodged in her upper jaw before her arrival at the centre was cut out.



She was one of four tropical nurse sharks which arrived at Weymouth Sea Life Park a few months ago from Florida.

She stopped feeding after a few weeks, so her keepers gave her steroid injections to try to restart her appetite.

But she grew "pale and listless", prompting her to be given an ultrasound scan in a mobile unit outside the centre, which revealed the hook.

"Seeing what she'd been living with we were amazed that she had survived," said sea life marine expert Dennis Chamberlain.

Vet Nick Masters, of the International Zoo Veterinary Group in Bristol, performed the operation.


An ultrasound revealed the rusty fishing hook in the shark's mouth
"The hook was very badly rusted and that immediately explained why she had been so ill," Mr Masters said.

Florence was tube-fed back in her tank for 10 days while receiving antibiotics.

"We began to see a difference in her after about three days," Mr Chamberlain said.

"After 10 days she took her first meal unaided and now, just a couple of weeks later, she's as good as new."

What is thought to be the world's first shark operation was carried out by a French vet last October at the Nausicca Aquarium in Boulogne.

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Greg Whitehead said:

I read a few of the stories but never saw anything about infection, just that it lost its appetite. It must just be the cynic in me that thought they carried out the ground-breaking, first-of-its-kind-in-the-UK surgery because the hook gave them a good excuse. Maybe the money and effort would have been be spent trying to stop commercial fishermen killing all the sharks in the open ocean.....

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Well said Greg. The scan image showed the hook in the fish's jaw/snout (no digestive juices there). Just needed unhooking so she could feed again.



The Angling Trust, should it respond, could ask the BBC how 'Florence' the Nurse Shark, always better to humanise an overgrown dogfish, or any other of their shark exhibits, are actually captured for sea life zoos.

My guess would be on a commercial longline - the snood snipped off at the hook if unhooking is troublesome.



The BBC should apologise to the public; as should the Sea Life Park - if it misinformed any media journalists.

This all seems like a bit of overreaction to me guys. I think they were just looking for a human interest story. It could have been a 3-legged dog with a wheel fitted or a swan with lead in it's croup. It's just another story to them.
If we use practices that make us look bad in front of the public, that's our problem, not the BBCs. They are just reporting the facts after all. I've been on several trips where sharks were hooked and instead of attempting unhooking, the trace was just cut - usually with the nonsense line from someone of 'oh, it'll get rid of it in a day or two'. I'll bet many of you have heard this too.
Perhaps we should treat this as a wake up call that we should take a bit of notice of instead of complaining about the media's reaction to it. Start a USE STAINLESS HOOKS FOR PREDATORS campaign perhaps?

Campaign to see which silly 4rse is going to be the 1 to unhook the shark.

A lot of the Shark Charter Boats make there living out of catching and releasing sharks, it is not in their interest to Kill that that makes their money.
I'm sure that they know what they are doing and if they don't then there licenses should be revoked.

Just how do you go about unhooking a 1900lb Great White shark in the middle of the Ocean?

How would a stainless hook have made the situation any different other than it wouldn't have gone rusty. It didn't say that the rust made the Shark lose it's appetite.

Barbless hooks would have made a difference the hook would have pulled out easier, but then you will get the oh barbless hooks would have left a bigger hole as they slip and tear in the Sharks mouth, i'm sure the shark would have rather had that than a hook stuck in there and being unable to feed.

Don't we all talk a load of bolleaux about hooks left in fish. 'Oh, that will dissolve in the stomach juices,' we say. No it won't. Fish digestions are designed to dissolve flesh and bone, not steel. 'Oh, that will fall out in time,' we say. Not necessarily. I've caught fish with hooks that have been in them festering away for months.
The nurse shark in the story will have been caught on rod and line to sell to zoological fish suppliers. The angler who caught it had a choice; to remove the hook causing a deep wound and making the fish unsaleable or snipping it off to hide the bit embedded in the roof of the shark's mouth. He chose the latter.
Hooks cause very little damage to fish's mouths if they can be removed quickly and easily; i.e. barbless hooks or whisker-barbed. Nobody should be making hooks like the one shown in the shark's X Ray. They're barbaric.

I fished a local lake last season and had a carp around Eight pounds, dangling from it's mouth, was what I thought at first sight a piece of weed, as I went to unhook the fish I saw it was a braided hooklength, as Pulled gently on this it came away, the hook had almost completely corroded away and all that was left hanging from the trace was the bit of hook from the eye to the bend. I looked closely into the fishes mouth and there was only a tiny mark where the hook had been. I am sure that there was no further damage and the fish was obviously healthy, despite carrying the hook the fish must have been able to feed OK.

I had another similar incident a couple of weeks ago, I was float fishing a lake for roach when I caught a vary small mirror carp (about 6 inches long) Again the fish had a braided hooklink hanging from it's mouth. On inspection, the hooklink was longer than the fish and the hook, (which looked about a size 4) had exited the fishes mouth via the cheek part, just how that fish managed to impale itself on such a comparatively huge hook and how the rig became detached from the mainline I will never know. The point is, the fish was still feeding successfully despite it's obvious handicap. I would have thought that this hook like the other would have eventually rotted away.

Can I ask if we have definite knowledge concerning whether hooks will rot away or not? It seems to me we dont.

The man who told me about it was someone I respected, who made his living from angling, a serious, careful and knowledgable man. Mere assertions that he is wrong really need some kind of backup, because he would not have come to that conclusion without good reason.

It seems to me that if a stainless treble become lodged in a pike's mouth it might prevent it from feeding and thereby kill it. The same would happen with a bronze one. The infection would come from the water and the weed, not the hook rusting. The main cause is the hook, of whatever kind, being left in the fish's mouth.

It seems to me that though it might be awkward, it should be quite possible to have some kind of harness that prevented a shark moving, and held its jaw open, while the hook is removed. the same apparatus could then lift it over the side and let it go: that is of course unless we are to be forced to kill everything we catch.

Is there someone always watching to make sure we kill our catch? No there isnt. It would be unenforceable

Providing a hook left in a fish is not inhibiting its ability to feed then it would seem logical that the fish will continue as normal until the hook corrodes away. Let's face it, we don't catch all that many fish with hooks in them (on wild venues - no idea about commercials), therefore those fish that do end up with hooks left in them either lose them fairly quickly or get killed by them. Seeing as we don't tend to see lots of dead fish on intensively-fished venues like Throop and The Royalty, amongst others, I think we can safely say that leaving hooks in fish doesn't do them too much harm. Deep-hooking fish is what I think we need to avoid one way or the other.
I struggle to believe this shark was caught to order by a fisherman who cut off deliberately. That's not a sensible thing to do if you're looking to sell it on live. Surely anyone acquiring a shark for an aquarium would want to know how it had been caught? If by rod and line then surely they would check its mouth. It's not a two tonne great white - you could sit on it and open its mouth and look inside without losing your fingers.
Let's be honest, all that poppycock about the vet risking his hands is just journalistic rubbish, the fish was off in cloud cuckoo land, he was safer than he would be cleaning his own teeth!!!

To an extent, I agree hooks in their mouths corrode to nothing; exposure to oxygen being the important factor. I've caught one or two fish with the remnants of hooks in their lip, which would have gone pretty quickly afterwards. Nor do all fish with hooks left in them die, even if the hook is stainless.
But this particular hook, shown in Xray, was just the bend and barb embedded in the roof of the shark's mouth. You could see clearly the enormous barb on the hook, and it was a big hook, too. As the report said, infection was the problem, but my point is that a hook deeply embedded in this part of the mouth would be liable to cause greater problems, as there are a whole load of vital organs above the roof of the mouth.
Regards fish being caught on rod and line for aquaria, this is the normal practise, as my mate at Sea Life Centre and a scientist at the EA have told me. Netting is impractical for many species and netting causes more damage than rod and line.
Cutting the hook shaft off just hides the evidence - without a Xray, you wouldn't be able to see the hook.
And on Throop, how would you know if a hooked fish eventually died? As it weakened, it would be swept downstream and might wash up miles away.

MarkTheSpark said:

As the report said, infection was the problem, but my point is that a hook deeply embedded in this part of the mouth would be liable to cause greater problems

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Elasmobranchs (sharks, rays and relatives) have blood chemistry that means a lump of corroding metal within the tissues will potentially cause major problems, plus you have the fact that they have ampullae of lorenzini (sensory organs) all over the rostrum which may be adversely affected by the presence of a large chunk of corroding ferrous metal (and could in this case have contributed towards the loss of appetite).

Regards fish being caught on rod and line for aquaria, this is the normal practise, as my mate at Sea Life Centre and a scientist at the EA have told me. Netting is impractical for many species and netting causes more damage than rod and line.

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Perfectly true, suppliers in the US use this method widely for larger species. It's not unknown for stingrays for pass almost-intact hooks out with faeces up to several months after acquisition, a pretty good trick when you consider that elasmos have a pretty convoluted spiral valve in their intenstines.

Cutting the hook shaft off just hides the evidence - without a Xray, you wouldn't be able to see the hook.

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For those suggesting that this procedure was "just because they could", once the presence of the hook was known the institution concerned would then have a legal obligation to take appropriate action (at very high cost in this case) to remediate the situation. In cases like this the people you are meant to consult with are also the same people who will charge you a large sum for carrying out the procedure, but rocks and hard places are often found together like this. There also the fact that it's better to find out if this is possible on a tough (and fairly replaceable) species like the Nurse before you encounter a similar situation with something that's going to give the accountants a thrombosis if it becomes so much sashimi. If anyone is still interested I can find out more about the case at a conference next month.

As for the slant of the BBC piece, I think we're all familiar with journo's putting an "emphasis" on a story. It's almost as if they want to create opinions rather than just report the facts, innit?

Would an angler catching fish to order use a hook like that, or is it possible, as I initially suggested, that it could have been a long-line victim? My impression was that commercial long liners are far more likely to cut nuisance species loose as they're an inconvenience on a boat which wastes time (and therefore money).... I've seen a number of films of commercial fishermen cutting a catch free as the fish comes level with the boat. It would also equate to the size of the hook.
With regards doing the op, how much would it cost to get another shark? More than the op and associated vetinary bills? Running a story about such ground-breaking surgery that goes national doesn't do a place none of have ever heard of any harm does it? Great publicity!

Hook removal

Surely a large conger eel is potentially as dangerous as a shark and a far more formidable adversary in the confines of a boat well. That is why most congers now are returned to the depths without their ever leaving the water by the simple use of a long T bar. I have seen many a film of a trace being cut and the hook left in the shark with the hook clearly visible in the scissors. Surely again the T bar would work?

Greg Whitehead said:

Would an angler catching fish to order use a hook like that, or is it possible, as I initially suggested, that it could have been a long-line victim?

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You mean caught and discarded prior to being collected by hook and line for the zoological trade, or caught and retained live by a long-liner and then sold on to a zoological trader? Unlikely in either case, long-liners tend to target pelagics and G. cirrhatum is a demersal species, and long-liners don't have the facilities for adequate live retention.
The hook doesn't look especially heavy to me, where you could encounter a wide range of species and sizes it's better to err on the side of caution. The idea is to get them into the live well as quickly as possible, this isn't sport fishing we're talking about.

My impression was that commercial long liners are far more likely to cut nuisance species loose as they're an inconvenience on a boat which wastes time (and therefore money)....

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That would likely be the snood that was cut rather than the hook under those circumstances. As there's no evidence of the hook having corroded level with the flesh, it has to be assumed the hook was cut at the bend.

With regards doing the op, how much would it cost to get another shark? More than the op and associated veterinary bills?

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Probably not for a Nurse, they're relatively cheap and common, but a zoological institution has, as I've said, a legal obligation to put in place appropriate veterinary care where a known issue exists. Once the presence of the hook was known, to ignore it would be to invite criticism from DEFRA during the periodic inspections, especially if the health of the shark continued to decline. DEFRA inspection reports, even for private companies, are available under the FOI Act, and the antis make full use of this to search through them and then instigate harrassment campaigns on even the most insignificant issue.

Running a story about such ground-breaking surgery that goes national doesn't do a place none of have ever heard of any harm does it? Great publicity!

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Merlin Entertainments are a big company, of course they are media-savvy. Most people have heard of the Sea Life brand, not everyone knows there's a facility at Weymouth where new specimens are received, quarantined, conditioned and if necessary treated before distribution to other centres. The cost of the surgery has more than been recouped through the associated publicity, they are a business and it's in their own interests to maximise potential, but they are not able to dictate to the Beeb how a story is portrayed.

Coelacanth said:

The hook doesn't look especially heavy to me, where you could encounter a wide range of species and sizes it's better to err on the side of caution. The idea is to get them into the live well as quickly as possible, this isn't sport fishing we're talking about.

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To me the hook is absolutely huge, 14/0 maybe 16/0, and of heavy wire.

I fish for tope of similar size to the unfortunate 'Florence'. Sakuma Extra 7/0 tied to heavy mono or fluorocarbon (never wire) traces, chemically sharpened with whisker barbs, sometimes crushed, they are always easy to remove/unhook.

Coelacanth said:

As there's no evidence of the hook having corroded level with the flesh, it has to be assumed the hook was cut at the bend.

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It certainly looks that way doesn't it?

Coelacanth said:

Merlin Entertainments are a big company, of course they are media-savvy. Most people have heard of the Sea Life brand, not everyone knows there's a facility at Weymouth where new specimens are received, quarantined, conditioned and if necessary treated before distribution to other centres. The cost of the surgery has more than been recouped through the associated publicity, they are a business and it's in their own interests to maximise potential, but they are not able to dictate to the Beeb how a story is portrayed.

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Yes - obviously they are media savvy, the operation costs will probably be recouped many hundred fold, but in failing to disclose the true circumstances of the capture, and their dissatisfaction with it, I feel they played into the hands of an anti-angling brigade which the BBC now seems to cater to. This story only sublimably so, but with several others in the last 6 months it seems to be the way the Beeb is going - perhaps worthy of its own thread?