Diver Finds Old Camera - When He Looks At The Footage, He Calls Authorities

On his summer holiday, a diver found an old camera on the seabed during a diving trip. 

Judging from the model of the camera and the amount of algae on it, the camera seemed to have been there for several years.

He did not hesitate for a moment and immediately took the camera out of the water. He wanted to know if there was still a memory card in it and quickly opened the camera. To his surprise, the memory card was still there.

When he saw the pictures on the memory card, he called the newspaper...

The expedition

On the morning of May 13, 2019, a diving team from a coastal town in Canada prepared for a diving excursion. The reason for this dive was that the diving team wanted to get to know the waters of Canada.

Besides their love for diving, the team was also interested in sea creatures. The intention was to dive and take notes of all the sea creatures they encountered. 

But the purpose of that day soon changed.

When the team loaded up the boat and headed out into the deep blue sea, they had no idea what adventure the depths of the ocean had in store for them....

The team especially wanted to dive into the cold water to study all kinds of starfish. They hoped to be able to take a few starfish with them to investigate their behavior.

But when they reached the seabed, something caught one of the diver's attention. At first, he had no idea what the object could be.

So the diver and his partner got closer, determined to find out. Once the divers got close, they saw what it was...a camera.

At this time, however, neither of them had any idea what consequences finding this camera would have.

Beau (left), and Tanja (right) were the members of the diving team who noticed something strange on the seabed.

Beau saw the camera first. When he pointed at it, Tanja also knew that the 'strange square object' did not belong on the seabed.

They swam towards the camera. They both wanted to keep the ocean clean and an ocean is no place for a camera. 

But when the two divers got closer, they noticed that it was full of coral and all kinds of fish were swimming around it. Still, they decided to take the camera out of the sand and continue diving with the other team members.

But Beau could only think of one thing...

After Beau discovered the rusty camera, he put it in his diving bag and continued his investigation. But as he continued his diving expedition, the diver couldn't help but wonder who the old camera belonged to.

But even more importantly: how did this camera end up on the seabed, so deep in the water and so far from shore? And how long had it been there? What exciting story was hidden behind this camera?

When all the divers were tired and had got back on the boat, Beau said: 'Look what I found'. As you can imagine, the whole team was curious and wanted to know everything about the unusual find on the seabed.

When Beau told them what he'd found, the old camera caught the attention of one of his team members, Jason. What was so special about this rusty camera?

Jason's a marine biologist. That's why he went on the dive. He was a little disappointed with the dive trip. But when he looked at the camera, he was surprised by all the algae and animals that were living on it. According to Jason, the camera could have been there for at least 5 years.

He decided to open the camera to see what else he could find inside. 
But what he discovered was almost too good to be true...

When Jason opened the camera and looked inside, he couldn't believe his eyes.
Although everyone could see rust and algae on the outside of the camera, nothing could prepare them for  what was on the inside.

Inside, he found not only more rust, but also a sea cucumber, two starfish and lots of algae. For Jason, who was a biologist, this was a big find. Nature had found a way to use the camera as a shelter for starfish and algae.

But then his friend, Beau, suddenly discovered something. A memory card... Could there anything on it?

Because the camera had been lying on the seabed for several years, no one believed that the memory card would still work. But Beau knew that memory cards could take a beating.

When he removed the memory card from the camera, he was right. It looked pretty good!

Even though the memory card was full of black algae, the team hoped that it would still work if it was placed in a computer. 

They also hoped that there would still be photos or videos on the card. If so, the diving team could even track down the original owner. 

But that's how an even bigger mystery began...

When Beau discovered that the memory card was almost intact, he felt a wave of excitement flowing through him.

'My first thought was: are there still pictures on the card?' he remembered. Even in the interview, months after they found the camera, Beau could barely contain his excitement about solving this long forgotten mystery.

After removing the memory card from the camera, Beau carefully cleaned each piece with a cotton swab and alcohol. Then he put it in his computer and took a deep breath.

The moment of truth came... the memory card worked! 

Beau was very happy to see that not only was the memory card still working, but it also contained a lot of photos and videos. 

Hopefully the contents of the memory card would lead the team to the owner of the camera. But finding the owner became a difficult task...

At first, Beau felt intrusive browsing through someone's photos, but he didn't know any other way to find the owner.

So they started looking at the pictures one by one. While scrolling through them, the pictures turned out to be from 2008!

And then they saw one family picture....

Even though Beau had access to the photos, he still felt bad looking through someone's personal belongings.

Worse still, after going through each photo, he couldn't find any clues that would help him find the owner. The diver had no idea what to do next...

Apart from the family photo, there were also pictures of a rescue operation on the memory card... So the owner was involved in an accident, Beau thought.

Considering the pictures were on the memory card, he figured that they had to be very valuable to the owner.  So Beau wanted to continue his search anyway!

Fortunately, he was about to unlock a clue that would solve everything...

As Beau ran out of ideas of his own, he decided to ask his diving buddy, Tanja, (below) for help. They had found the camera together, so she was all too eager to help solve the mystery of it.

After thinking for a while, Tanja realized that their best option was to find the owner of the camera by posting the pictures on social media.

The next day, they put the pictures online with the hashtag 'detective'. One day later, the photos went viral. The photos received hundreds of reactions, likes and retweets.

Despite all the interaction and feedback, the rightful owner still hadn't responded.  A few days later, Beau and Tanja decided to change their plan.

And with success...

After a few days, Beau and Tanja realised that the posts on social media hadn't done anything to find the owner. So they chose to try something new. After all, they had agreed not to stop the search until the rightful owner was found!

The camera was too important for the original owner! After a lot of thinking, Beau and Tanja decided to call the newspaper to post an article about the lost camera. But the local newspaper refused to cooperate because they failed to see how important the camera could be to its rightful owner. So they decided to print the pictures themselves and hang them all over the city.

Believe it or not, it didn't take very long before a man from the Coast Guard remembered the pictures of the rescue operation.

Apparently, one of the men in the photos was rescued a few years ago from a shipwreck...

It turned out that one of the men in the photographs was Paul Burgoyne, an artist from Canada.
Apparently, Paul Burgoyne had lost his boat in 2008, when it sank, not far from where the diver had found the camera.

The Coast Guard who recognized the man was a good friend of Paul's. He would call him and tell him that the camera had been found. Beau and Tanja gave the Coast Guard the memory card and he would give it to his good friend, Paul.

Meanwhile, Beau and Tanja were delighted that their hard work had finally yielded some results. What they didn't know, however, is that the story wouldn't end there. 

Two months had gone by when Beau suddenly received a phone call.  On the other end of the line was none other than Paul Burgoyne. Paul was very happy and grateful to be able to speak to Beau. Apparently, Burgoyne could not believe that the diving team had found his long lost camera!

And as Beau had thought, Paul told us how much the camera meant to him. "When I heard that my camera had been found after all these years, I had tears in my eyes of happiness," said Paul. 

During the phone call, Beau was finally told about the mysterious history of the camera...

Paul was very grateful because most of the photos on the memory card were no ordinary family photos. 

Most of the photos were taken on the day he and his family had scattered the ashes of his deceased mother. That made the loss of his camera even more difficult: it was all Burgoyne had from his mother's last moments.

Beau, of course, had to know how Burgoyne could have lost such an important camera. But he soon understood that the camera had been lost in a terrible way.

"It was the year 2008 that we scattered my mother's ashes," Paul said. I went to the coastal town in Canada to spread her ashes across the ocean with my brothers and sisters. That was her greatest wish. 

We went on the boat. It was a quiet and beautiful summer afternoon. The sun was high in the sky and a small breeze was blowing through our hair. It was a beautiful day to make our mother's last wish come true. 

But on the way back, everything changed for the worst and suddenly we were in the middle of a storm.

As we sailed through the storm, I tried to stay calm and rely on my skills.

But the sea became very wild and the boat crashed into some hidden rocks near the shore. In the ensuing panic, I plunged from the boat into the water and lost almost everything, except for my camera.

It was as if all hell was breaking loose."

After Paul's boat had crashed into the rocks and the hull had fallen apart, it quickly sank into the ocean. Within minutes, Paul was trapped in the icy water.

He soon developed symptoms of hypothermia and saw his whole life flash before his eyes. He thought that he would never come out of the horrible accident alive. Luckily, customers from a nearby inn saw him and called the Coast Guard.

Believe it or not, Paul and his family had to stay in the cold water for six hours. They were eventually rescued and brought back to the coast. Paul managed to capture everything on his camera. But while sailing back to the coast, the lifeboat rocked against a wave and Paul lost his camera. Now he had literally lost everything.

Fortunately, after a short stay in hospital, he was able to go home a healthy man. But his belongings were lost forever, or so he thought...

As you can imagine, Paul couldn't believe he had finally got the camera back after so long. Nowadays, the pictures remind Paul to always be thankful for what's his. 

"The loss of my camera had made me realize that I need to value the important moments we experience in our lives. And then suddenly my camera turned up."

Beau and Tanja never expected that their diving trip to the bottom of the sea would bring about so much. It was a small effort to get the camera out of the water, but it turned out to have an amazing impact on the owner.