New Zealand fisherman pulls a floating 'porcelain' doll from the sea. And then it squeaked

Article content

The sun had barely been up an hour when Gus Hutt reached the shoreline of Matata Beach, which borders the Bay of Plenty on the northern coast of New Zealand, at around 7:15 am on October 26. He was there to check his fishing lines, he later explained and said he noticed something floating in the water.

He reached in and pulled out what looked like a doll. Then the doll squeaked.

“Oh god, this is a baby and it’s alive,” Hutt recalled to the Whakatane Beacon. The baby, he described, seemed so still and his face looked “porcelain”.

Not knowing who the baby belonged to, Hutt said his wife Sue immediately ran over to the nearby Murphy’s Holiday camp and informed the park manager. The manager directed them to the only family they knew who had come with a baby.

“She ran to the tent and just shook it and asked, ‘where’s your baby — we just pulled one from the sea’ and the mother just screamed,” Hutt told Stuff, a local news website.

The news came as a sick joke to Jessica Whyte, the baby’s mother, who said she was awakened at 7:30 a.m by the camp manager. “It was horrible in between hearing that and seeing him,” she said. “I don’t think my heart (beat) from hearing that to seeing him. I don’t think my heart worked.”

The 18-month-old baby, named Malachi, appeared cold, purple and smaller than usual when the parents met him at the park’s reception. But “he was breathing, he was alive,” said Whyte, according to the Telegraph, adding that she gave him a “big hug”.

Malachi usually wakes at 8 a.m., according to Whyte, but the sound of the nearby waves could be why he had risen early. She said that he had tried to run into the sea on the previous day but had been stopped by his parents.

Emergency services arrived with the Matata Volunteer Fire Brigade and treated the boy for 15 minutes before an ambulance arrived to take him to Whakatāne Hospital.

Although Malachi’s parents later thanked Hutt and expressed hopes of meeting again in the future, Hutt notes that there was an added stroke of good fortune that helped him save the boy’s life, namely in his choice of fishing location.

Usually, he said, he headed out straight from the camp to fish from the beach but on that Friday, he had decided to walk a 100 metres to the left, towards Tauranga. When he later traced the baby’s footprints down the beach, he said that Malachi entered the water about 15 metres away from where he had been fishing.

“If I hadn’t been there, or if I had just been a minute later I wouldn’t have seen him,” said Hutt, according to Stuff.

“He was bloody lucky,” he added. “But he just wasn’t meant to go; it wasn’t his time.”

Despite his near cross with death, Malachi remains unperturbed by water and still loves his showers, said Whyte.

“He’s himself. Maybe he’ll be more aware of water, not run into beaches. But he’s definitely himself,” she said.

She said she hopes this story will be heeded as a warning by other parents to properly zip up their tents when camping with their little ones. Malachi had pulled the zip up on their tent while they were sleeping and crawled out before going down to the beach.

“We wouldn’t let him run into the water by his own,” she said. ” People can have those [judgemental] thoughts. They can think we’re a bad parent. I’m more concerned about people zipping up their tents.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.