A trio of anglers successfully caught, tagged and released a great white shark from the surf off Panama City Beach Sunday morning, possibly the first time that a white shark has been caught from land in the Gulf.

Derrick Keeny, Gabriel Smeby and Kyle Register were fishing from the beach around 3:15 a.m. Sunday, when the shark, which they described as an adolescent male great white, struck Keeny's line.

When reached by phone, Smeby said it took about 45 minutes to get the 9-foot, 8.5-inch shark to the shore, where they took some photos, attached a tag to the animal and released it back into the water.

"It just kind of looked like a big dusky (shark) at first," Smeby said. "We couldn't really tell because we were without lights for the most part. We had a couple of flashlights, but that's about it.

"Then it kind of rolled sideways in the surf and we realized it was a white shark."

Smeby ran to his truck for a digital camera, snapping a few shots of Keeny with the animal before tagging it, reviving the animal by moving water across its gills and releasing it into the water. Smeby said the shark remained calm while they were placing the tag and removing the tackle, and swam off under its own power when they were done.

"Most of the time sharks will thrash around," Smeby said. "This one just kind of sat there. It's almost like the shark knew what it was doing, like it knew it wasn't really in any danger."

Smeby, Keeny and Register have been shark fishing for years in the Panama City Beach area as members of the Dark Side Sharkers group, but none of them had ever seen a great white before.

The Sharkers say they believe in CPR: Catch, photograph, release. They've been participating for years in the National Marine Fisheries' Services shark tagging program, in which recreational anglers tag and release sharks to provide more data if the shark turns up again.

"We're definitely more on the conservation side of everything," Smeby said. "We use big tackle and mainly circle hooks so it puts as little stress on the fish as possible and we can get a tag in them and get them on their way.

"I would say we probably release between 95 and 98 percent of all the sharks we catch."

White sharks, commonly called great whites although it's not the actual name of the species, are protected by law. White sharks have been targeted by recreational and commercial fishermen for years and their slow reproduction rate makes them especially vulnerable to overfishing.

Though movies like "Jaws" made white sharks out to be man-eaters, the species rarely interact with humans in the Gulf of Mexico. There has never been a confirmed human attack by a white shark in the Gulf, and Smeby said he believes this is the first time a white shark has been caught from shore.

"I feel like we made history the other day," he said. "We talk to everybody from Texas to the southern tip of Florida up the eastern seaboard, and as far as we can tell it's the only one land-based ever caught in the Gulf of Mexico."

Marcus Drymon, a marine scientist who specializes in sharks at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, confirmed that the animal in the photos is a white shark.

Drymon said he wasn't aware of a white shark caught from land in the Gulf in recent memory, but cautioned that people should not try to replicate the feat.

"It is a federally protected species," he said. "Obviously he let it go, which is the right call, but even it being out of the water long enough to measure it and take pictures is a problem.

"It's an amazing fish though. I hope it does well. It's pretty incredible really."