A dramatic video captured by Sbn Stendo shows a man locked in a fierce struggle with a nurse shark at Jetty Beach in Coffs Harbour.

The footage reveals the intense effort as the nurse shark fights vigorously while the fisherman uses his legs to trap the shark and carefully remove a deeply lodged fishing hook from its mouth.

Nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) belong to the Ginglymostomatidae family and are listed as Vulnerable globally by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Though considered of least concern in the United States and The Bahamas, nurse sharks face near-threatened status in the western Atlantic Ocean because of risks in South America and threats throughout Central America and the Caribbean.

These sharks are sometimes directly targeted by fisheries and are also frequently caught unintentionally as by-catch.

Nurse sharks are valuable to scientific research due to their ability to tolerate capture, handling, and tagging well.

Despite their generally calm and slow-moving behavior, nurse sharks rank fourth in recorded shark bites on humans, likely because divers often underestimate their potential danger.