Lost and Found

This camera (that was lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Vancouver Island) was recently found by two students conducting research dives. The students were diving for starfish near Bamfield, British Columbia on May 13 when they came across the camera.

After the divers surfaced they opened the camera and were surprised to find the camera's memory card still intact. They extracted it from the camera with a pair of tweezers, cleaned it off and inserted it into a computer. Amazingly, it still worked which was pretty shocking considering the fact that the camera had been underwater for so long.

The memory card was full of photographs and a few videos. There were lots of photographs of large groups of people, like a family reunion. Isabelle Cote, professor of Marine Ecology tweeted out this picture and her co-professor had the photo printed and she hung it up around town hoping one of the locals would recognize someone in the picture.

A member of the local Coast Guard station recognized one of the men in the picture as someone they had rescued from a shipwreck nearly two years ago, on July 30, 2012.

Paul Burgoyne, an artist from Vancouver and the man in the center of the photograph in the light gray T-shirt, was attempting to sail when he got a little lost in rough waters. He thought his boat was set on auto-pilot, but it wasn't. He crashed and scrambled to swim to the shore, but couldn't make it. He reached some rocks and was stranded for about six hours and had hypothermia when he was finally rescued by the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard contacted Burgoyne to tell him that his camera had been found. He said that he and his wife "laughed and laughed and laughed" that of all of his possessions that had been lost, it was his small digital camera that had been found. The photo of Burgoyne was taken with his family members when he and his relatives were burying his mother's ashes. Burgoyne said he was surprised and very appreciate for all the work people went through to reunite him with his photos.

Cote mailed the memory card back to Burgoyne, but not before backing up the photographs on the computer first. I know how priceless family photographs are to me, so I'd say that those students uncovered buried treasure!