MAUI (KHNL) -- Rescuing entagled humpback whales.

It's a dangerous job. But somebody's got to do it.

Some of the best rescuers on the planet, work out of the island off Maui.

This video, provided by the rescuers themselves, shows thick ropes wrapped around an adult humpback whale.

No one knows for sure how long it's been dragging that surface buoy.

But, the gear appears to be from Alaska.

''We get some of these large humpback whales, 40-feet long, 35-40 tons of weight in gear and we try to get them out of that gear," said Ed Lyman.

Ed Lyman, leads the charge in rescuing humpbacks from entanglement.

Thanks to a three-decade long ban on whaling, the number of humpbacks steadily increased.

As a result, so has the number of whale entanglements.

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