A Coromandel father and son team rescued an exhausted and bloody orca after it became entangled in a cray pot.
Rhys Cochrane's rescue operation was captured on video.
The 20-year-old Hahei man located the orca after his family's diving business received a call from the Department of Conservation informing them the mammal was in distress and needed help.
The orca was discovered tangled in rope and cray pots several hundred metres off the Coromandel Coast on Tuesday afternoon.
"It had cuts all over its head from the rope… and down the tail there were a few rope burns and I could see blood from where the rope was," Cochrane told Fairfax NZ.
The whale, surrounded by a small pod of orca nearby, was exhausted after dragging the cray pot up from the ocean's surface.
"I jumped in the water to see how it was tangled and noticed it was tangled around the tail, which means it could be cut free," Cochrane said.
In a matter of minutes, Cochrane had cut the whale free using knives.
It's not the first time a whale has been rescued after becoming entangled in cray buoys and nets in New Zealand waters.
A juvenile humpback whale became entangled in rope and cray buoys in the Queen Charlotte Sounds in July last year and a juvenile orca got tangled in cray pot ropes in February last year.
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