MUMBAI: A 30-foot-long, " polka-dotted " whale shark weighing around 900kg which had got trapped in a fishing net around 12 nautical miles off the Vadrai coast in Palghar on Tuesday was untangled and set free by the fishermen .Their fishing boat Amarsai was in the high sea. Its owner Hitendra Meher and four labourers were onboard around 4am when they they caste their net and then relaxed on board. Around three hours later, they hauled back the net to find a whale shark entangled in the mesh.The fishermen used whatever equipment was at their disposal on the boat to release the fish. After 40 minutes, their effort paid off and the “gentle giant”, as it called, was untangled and set free.For those on onboard, it was a spectacular sighting. While two men were engaged in untangling the net, others captured it on their phone cameras. The videos were shared with other fishermen when they returned to shore on Wednesday.Meher said the whale shark is easy to identify due to white polka-like dots which appear in horizontal and vertical stripes on its body.In 2015, the carcass of a whale shark had washed ashore Satpati coast. As sharks prefer warm waters, they can be seen swimming across the globe from North America to South Africa to Asia and Australia. They are known to migrate long distances to feed. In India, they are found in Gujarat and Malwan in Maharashtra.Whale sharks are not consumed and it is illegal to catch them, said Malcolm Kasugar, a fisherman from Utan, Bhayander, who has sighted these fish a couple of times. Kasugar said due to its size, the fish tends to splash water around it as high as waves when it swims beside fishing boats.