A good Samaritan diver painstakingly removed a discarded fishing hook from the mouth of a frightened stingray.

Raffa Wake-Valais Sarbach, 37, was swimming off Bayahibe, Dominican Republic on January 7 when he and his partner spotted the ghost fishing line.

Disturbing footage showed three dead fish on the 20m piece of wire before the pair noticed a juvenile stingray was caught on one end.

After carefully turning the stingray over, divemaster Raffa worked for almost five minutes to pull the hook out of the animal’s mouth without causing any injury before letting it swim away.

Raffa, from Switzerland, said: “It looked like a juvenile stingray as it was half the size of an adult one. Fortunately I think we were lucky and that it wasn’t hooked for too long, likely less than an hour.

“It took me a good five minutes to remove the hook. Apart from slight injuries to the mouth, the stingray seemed fine.

“If I hadn’t managed to remove it, the hook could have caused the stingray to die. It could have had trouble eating or even snagged the fishing line on a rock and been unable to swim away.

“The line 20 metres long and had three dead fishes on it as well as two still alive before we got to the sting ray.