AP – Elliot Sudal didn’t need a bigger boat, but he did need to find a way to get a hook out of a shark’s mouth.

Sudal, a veteran angler and boat captain, reeled in the nearly nine-foot shark – also commonly known as a great white shark or a great white – on June 7 on Nantucket. White sharks are a protected species in the United States (US) and must be released immediately when accidentally caught.

That presents a nasty problem for a fisherman because the white shark is a formidable apex predator best known for the 1975 movie Jaws, in which Roy Scheider utters the famous line “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” upon seeing the big fish. Sudal, who caught the shark while fishing from shore, decided to use his encounter to demonstrate how to respond to such a situation.

Sudal posted a video of himself removing the hook to his social media accounts. In the video, Sudal climbs onto the back of the shark, secures the fish in the surf, and removes the hook from its mouth. By the end of the short video, the shark is back in the water.

White sharks typically have about 300 teeth arranged into five rows, so speed was key.

“Hooks out and back on her way in 15 seconds, not sure how to do it better,” Sudal wrote in an Instagram post that included a video of the shark release.

Sudal is no stranger to sharks, and has caught and tagged hundreds of them over the years. He said in a social media post that this month’s encounter with a white shark was the first time he has ever caught one of them in more than a decade of the work.

-- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin