The Boy In The Bubble

This is the moment a boy was discovered inside a bubble drifting in the Brazilian sea.

Video footage showed a person on a boat strapping a rope around the bubble and dragging it to the shore at Lázaro Beach in Ubatuba, São Paulo, where the child, who is about eight years old, was reunited with his parents.

Rafael do Prado told Metropoles news outlet that the child was in the bubble playing on the beach when its cable snapped and got dragged further out to sea.

He was riding his boat with his children when he spotted the big plastic orb and was curious to know if anyone was in it when he navigated towards it and saw the boy inside.

He spoke to the youngster and kept him calm while he waited for his friend, Welington Junior, to arrive in a speedboat that was better equipped to handle the rescue mission.

‘I was worried about whether he was able to breathe or not because the buoy is dangerous,’ Prado recalled.

‘There is a certain amount of time that you can breathe inside it. I calmed him down, and that was when my daughter started filming.’

‘I was afraid it would deflate with him inside,’ Junior said.

‘We put a rope through the bubble and dragged it as fast as we could, because we couldn’t go too fast, or we could hurt the boy.’

Beachgoers were cautioned by the Maritime Firefighters Group about the risks of using floatable gadgets, such as bubbles, at the beach when they are more suited for pools.

‘This type of toy is new to us on the beaches,’ captain Karoline Magalhães said.

‘It comes from swimming pools and now we are starting to have certain types of problems because this ball is easily dragged by the wind.’

The fire department official added that the bubble the boy was found in provides ‘a false sense of security.’

‘For every three deaths at sea, a drowning process begins with floating objects,’ Magalhães said.

‘Whether it’s a surfboard, an inflatable mattress, or these buoys, floating objects at sea are not safe.’

It’s a terrible idea to use an inflatable bubble. The youngster would have been submerged in a plastic straitjacket if it had ripped or opened in any way, and how could it have been fun for the youngster to be put inside a plastic bubble, tethered by a cable, being carried along the beach – what were his parents thinking?

Is this a new babysitting tool for parents so that they can be even less involved with their children and more immersed in their phones? And where were his parents in this debacle? They obviously weren’t watching him, and they definitely weren’t in a coma. Frankly, animals take better care of their young. Whatever happened to playing on the beach with a bucket and spade?

This child was clearly not in the middle of the ocean, but whatever the depth of water, it can be particularly perilous for a child of his age.

What crackpot designed these plastic balls, and what powers permitted them to be sold? And then there are the crackpot parents who allow their children to use them, and it goes on!

God knows why the youngster was inside this ball in the first place – maybe his parents thought he was a hamster.

Maybe this is a new way to travel now! Don’t give the migrants any ideas.