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Camera charts epic ocean journey

A ROYAL Dutch Navy sergeant has been reunited with the camera he lost during a scuba diving trip, seven months and 1,100 miles away from where he misplaced it.

When Dick de Bruin lost his camera during a scuba diving expedition off the Caribbean island of Aruba, he held out little hope of seeing it again, The Telegraph reports.

Yet seven months, 1,100 miles later, the camera is back with Mr de Bruin after an extraordinary ocean odyssey, and all thanks to Florida coastguard.

Paul Shultz spotted the bright red Nikon camera pounding against the rocks of a marina in Key West, Miami, on May 16. It was covered in six months’ worth of crusty sea growth and at first Mr Shultz mistook it for a rotting tomato.

Inside the waterproof plastic case, the camera was almost pristine and Mr Shultz was able to view the photographs and video it contained. There were pictures of two men preparing to scuba dive and a family nestled together on a sofa. There was a mysterious relic settled deep into the sea floor.

There was also a short video of splashing water and a brief glimpse of what looked like a fin, with the camera thrashing around under the control of something that clearly was not human.

“There was nothing on the pictures that said this camera belongs to so and so,” Mr Shultz said. Undeterred, he took his hunt online.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .