Man runs on water in a bubble, needs rescuing

The Coast Guard rescued Reza Baluchi, but not his bubble.

The 42-year-old endurance runner and peace activist had been attempting to run across 3,500 miles of ocean in an inflatable plastic bubble this weekend when, overcome with fatigue, he alerted the United States Coast Guard to his whereabouts.

Baluchi's goal: to run in a hamster-wheel-like hydro pod made of 3-mm-thick plastic around the Bermuda Triangle – from Florida to Bermuda to Puerto Rico and back to Florida – to raise money for his charity, Plant Unity.

See how the bubble works in a video from 2013 below:

Early in the week, the Coast Guard warned Baluchi, who fled Iran to escape persecution and is now an American citizen, to abandon his adventure after they noticed he had only protein bars and water packed for the journey. Baluchi refused, claiming he was well prepared for the trip – and was planning to catch fish.

When exhaustion took over, however, Baluchi finally agreed to abandon his bubble dream. He activated a location device about 70 nautical miles off the coast of Florida.

When rescuers reached him, Baluchi was “reportedly disoriented and asking for directions to Bermuda,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.

An MH-60 Jayhawk air-lifted Baluchi to an air station where he underwent a medical evaluation.

Baluchi later told the Miami Herald that he didn’t mean to turn on the location device and that he wasn’t disoriented. He had been sleeping, he insisted.

"I never quit," he said. “It’s not me.”

Petty Officer Mark Barney, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, disagreed:

“He activated both his spot beacon and personal locating beacon. That’s a distress call. When he activated those two things, he was calling for help,” Barney told the Miami Herald.

Baluchi is no stranger to long-distance runs. He has already run across the U.S. twice. According to his website, he ran around the perimeter of the country In 2007.

His mission? To deliver messages of peace and “to inspire unity.”

"Part of his effort was to make world peace but he got caught up in the Gulf Stream," Barney told CNN. “The chances of muscling out of the Gulf Stream were pretty low.”

Unfortunately, Baluchi’s $4,500 bubble – with his passport, green card and shoes still in it – is now lost at sea.

"Our concern is not the bubble," Barney told the Miami Herald. “Our main concern was to get him out of the water.”

"It was caught up in the same Gulf Stream he was caught in. If it didn’t sink, or unless someone retrieved it, the stream shot it up north. It’s a very powerful current."

With no money or boat, Baluchi will need help to get his bubble back before someone else finds it.

“I go around running, telling people, if you have a dream, you can do anything,” Baluchi said. “Now I’m here, no money, no bubble, no anything.”

"Reza doesn’t listen to anyone," Davis Hyslop, a businessman and one of Baluchi’s supporters, told CNN in 2012. “He has these outsized ambitions that he sets his mind to. He’s a success above and beyond anyone’s expectations. It’s almost biblical. But you gotta be a little crazy to undertake such an endeavour, right?”

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