I know whales don't usually mean harm to humans, but getting this close to a distressed 33-foot monster still takes some serious stones:

What's even crazier is that the diver, Hugues Vitry, had been studying this sperm whale for a decade as president of the Marine Megafauna Conservation Organization on the island nation of Mauritius.

"I have known this whale since he was born in 2011. The animal was facing us and he also recognized me because I have been studying the pod and we are regularly in water with them. I could see that his eye was wide open in fear, like that of a frightened horse. I went over to him and stroked him to calm him down.

After a few seconds he closed his eye as if he was sleeping, I got down and started to assess how I was going to free him. One end of the ropes was anchored far down into the blue at the bottom, some 2,000 meters below.

At such depths, the pressure of even a slight current on the rope is very high at the surface on the rope and it was pulling on the lower jaw, forcing it to open as wide as possible."

A bunch of buoys were apparently tethered to the rope and were removed by Vitry's team so other whales wouldn't get tangled.

As for who put the rope there, I have a theory: