A whale entangled in plastic shopping bags and fishing line has been saved after swimming up to a fishing boat in an apparent call for help.
Luckily for the creature, a man on board the boat came to its rescue and removed the excess debris from its mouth.
The incident, caught on camera by Ron Kovacs, occurred at Roseville Bridge in the Middle Harbour in Sydney, Australia.
The moment the marine mammal was rescued
Kovacs uploaded the video to his Facebook page on the 11th of August with the caption: "Removing fishing line and plastic bag from head of whale."
He tagged two friends in the post, Ivan Vandelay and Alan Dowling, who are believed to be the other two men in the footage.
He also wrote: "As you can see in video he just popped his head up so you could reach out and remove the garbage.
"He was very inquisitive and interested in us. You could see that big eye coming out watching us. They are not dumb."
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After the rubbish was removed from the whale's mouth, the creature can be seen flapping its fin, in a possible show of appreciation for the kind act.
It came so close to the boat that the men were able to take stunning images of the creature. Some revealed scars, possibly from fishing line, on its back.
A close up photograph of the majestic creature
Sadly whales are routinely caught in human waste and debris floating in the sea.
Earlier this year crews freed an entangled 45-ton humpback whale stuck in fishing line off the coast of Hawaii.