An 11-year-old boy was found floating at sea in a blow-up bubble ball after it snapped free from its cable.
Wind blew the unnamed boy away from his family at Lázaro Beach, Ubatuba, in São Paolo, Brazil, until he was adrift alone on the water.
That’s when Rafael Graça do Prado, 32, spotted the inflatable vessel while riding a speedboat with his children on Christmas Eve.
‘It had already hit the rocks and was punctured, it was leaking’, Rafael, who owns a nautical tourism company, said.
‘The boy was very desperate, he was hitting himself. He was very scared out there in the middle of the sea, alone.
‘I asked if he was breathing well and he gave me a thumbs up.’
But Rafael was terrified the screaming boy would run out of oxygen, CNN reports. He said: ‘You can only breathe inside it for a certain amount of time.
‘I calmed him down, and that’s when my daughter started filming.’
Footage shows the crew of another boat, belonging to Rafael’s friends, pulling the inflatable beside them, but they decided not to open it.
If they did, they feared the boy might jump out in panic, or the bubble could fill with water an drown him, so they attached a steal cable and pulled it back to shore.
Rafael said: ‘We brought him to the beach and the family was very desperate, crying.’
The local lifeguards later shared a post on social media warning families: ‘Keep an eye on the little ones at the beach. Always keep children at an arm’s distance.’
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