A man in New Zealand is being called a hero after he saved a baby boy from drowning while fishing on a beach.

Guss Hutt was on Matata Beach on the country's North Island just after 7am on October 26. He had moved 100m up the beach from where he usually fished and was checking his lines when he spotted the 18-month-old floating by. He initially thought that it was a doll.

"So, I reached out and grabbed him by the arm; even then I still thought it was just a doll," he told the New Zealand Herald.

"His face looked just like porcelain with his short hair wetted down, but then and he let out a little squeak and I thought 'oh God this is a baby and it's alive'.

"He was floating at a steady pace... if I had been just a minute later, I wouldn't have seen him." Gus, who was staying at nearby Murphy's Holiday Camp, called for his wife Sue. She alerted the camp's managers, who informed her that there was just one couple camping there with a baby. She then rushed to find them on the campsite. It turned out the boy had unzipped the tent during the night and made his way down to the beach. Meanwhile, Gus had wrapped the little boy in towel after the rescue. He was attended to by members of the local fire brigade before an ambulance arrived to take him to Whakatāne Hospital. The baby was miraculously unharmed by the accident, though his parents were very shaken. His mother Jessica Whyte descried the incident as "horrible". "I don't think my heart [beat] from hearing that to seeing him. I don't think my heart worked," she said.