This is the heartwarming moment hero fishermen saved a baby whale shark trapped inside a net during monsoon rains in the Philippines.

The locals were docking their boats away from the rough seas when they spotted the 15ft-long juvenile marine mammal stranded near the shallows in Pangasinan province on September 19.

Despite the urgent need to secure the boats from the severe weather, the trawlers left their tasks and tended to the young endangered creature locally called 'butanding'.

Footage shows the group rushing to the water to heave the slow-moving baby giant out of the net before the creature slowly swam away.

Fisherman John Centino said: ‘My neighbours were preparing for the typhoon and taking everything to the beach when we saw something moving near one of the boats. We knew it was a whale shark, but it was still small and a baby, so we quickly helped it.'

John added that the winds had been gusty that day, so the creature might have been pushed to the beach while looking for food.

He said: ‘There were some tuna on the net where it was trapped. The young whale shark might have been attracted to snack on them and pushed to the beach.'

The baby whale shark was reportedly uninjured and returned to the sea after the rescue.

Whale sharks are classified as ‘endangered' by the nongovernment organisation International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as its population declined by more than 50 per cent over the last decades. It is also the largest living non-mammalian vertebrate.

The Philippines and other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, are in the middle of their tropical monsoon rainy season, which lasts until October or November.