There’s a whale trapped in nets at Middle Harbour 02:15

Now, we've already spoken about a lot that's going on this afternoon, but there's something going on that's been happening in Middle Harbour. A young humpback whale has got itself tangled up in some nets in and around Middle Harbour. Now, authorities were alerted to the incident by a whale-watching cruise, and there are now crews working to free the trapped whale. Well, Nine News reporter James Wilson, he's all over this, and he's on the line. James, g'day. G'day, Chris. How are you going? So what's happened here? Okay.

In the last five minutes, we've actually just seen this whale make its way out of the harbour, out of Sydney Heads and towards the ocean. And as that's happened, these National Parks and Wildlife crews have brought their buoys back in, which they attached to a rope which was tangled around the whale's tail. And we think that potentially this whale's now been rescued successfully. All signs, it's hard to confirm where we are. We're on a water taxi in the harbour.

But from where we are, they're heading back to base and it looks like it's mission accomplished for these guys, which is incredible news. This juvenile humpback whale, as you mentioned, it was spotted by a whale watching tour around 1.20 coming into the harbour. And over the last four hours, it's basically just done a big loop around past Mossman and Balmoral, over to Walsh Shark Island, Rose Bay and Watson's Bay and managed to work its way back out into the ocean. We're hoping, fingers crossed,

without this long rope that was attached to its tail. So where did it pick it up, do you know? We're not sure where the rope was picked up by this whale. We only know that it was spotted around 1.20pm by this whale-watching tour. In quite a bit of distress, Chris, this whale was making runs and by the time volunteers or rescuers got to it, they attached these massive orange buoys to the rope in an effort to slow it down and the whale would make a run for a couple of minutes and then get tuckered out

They'd get close enough. And what they actually do, they're on these little ribs. They get close enough. They cut their engine. They grab onto the rope that's around its tail and by hand pull themselves closer to the whale's tail and then use a knife attached to a rope to sever the rope and let the whale go free. So it's off out the heads now? Yeah, it's just left the harbour, off out the heads, as we said, hopefully without a tail around its rope and quite the story to tell. Good on you, James. Look forward to your report at six. Thanks, Chris. That's James Wilson from Nine News, 13187.