Just minutes after a fisherman hooked a 100-pound rare soupfin shark, Capt. Chris Pica helped calm and free the seven-footer.

It was during a charter fishing trip Saturday, June 10, off local South Orange County waters when Pica and a group of fishermen out on a birthday fishing trip came across the dark gray shark.

The fishermen were targeting white sea bass when all of a sudden one of them hooked something different.

The shark had a long slender body, a long snout, a small second dorsal fin and a large lobe on the upper section of its tail.

“He put up a good fight and we chased him all around the boat,” said Pica, who three weeks ago made national news after rescuing an entangled great white shark in the surf line off Capistrano Beach.

It took Pica and another fisherman to heave the fighting beast aboard. Once on the boat, the shark began freaking out even more.

That’s when Pica remembered that some killer whales that hunt sharks often flip them on their backs putting them into a sort of paralyzed state known as tonic immobility.

“I turned him on his back and rubbed his belly a little and he calmed down,” Pica said.

Pica also saw that the shark had become entangled in some fishing line when it got hauled aboard.

He pulled that and kelp off and with the help of another fisherman tossed it back into the ocean.

Unlike great white sharks, it is not illegal to catch the soupfin shark, Pica said.

But for Pica, who has become a shark whisperer-of-sorts, giving this shark a second chance was important.

“I’ve been fishing these waters since 1989 and I’ve never seen a soupfin shark,” he said. “They are very rare. At one time they were fished out.”

According to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Soupfin was the biggest shark fishery in California in the 1930s and 1940s.

Soupfin sharks were coveted for making a popular sharkfin soup. Their livers also held value, containing high levels of vitamin A.

Another interesting fact about these sharks is that they separate by sex. Female soupfin are generally found off Southern California while their male counterparts swim in schools off Northern California, researchers found.

There is currently very little information about the status of soupfin shark stocks off the West Coast, according to the aquarium.

But California has become safer for these sharks. In 2011, the state banned the sale or possession of any shark fin products.

The soupfin shark is a relative of the leopard shark and the smooth hound shark.

Pica, a captain for Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching, laughed off the idea of being a “shark whisperer.”

“You never know what life will throw in your face,” the 53-year-old said. “It’s always another day in the life of Dana Wharf.”