A few screenshots, a couple of seconds of audio and an enormous social media response had been all it took to get a misplaced digicam from the underside of the ocean again to its proprietor in lower than 48 hours.
Because it seems, the digicam had been misplaced for almost a yr.
Diver Ken Kieley can’t consider how briskly all of it performed out.
Kieley and his spouse had been diving off Ogden Level in Victoria on Sunday and had been scouring the seafloor for octopus dens after they found a GoPro about 30 ft beneath the floor.
Kieley stated when he acquired house, he found some water had gotten into the digicam, however its SD card was in excellent form.
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On the cardboard had been a number of movies, together with a recording of the digicam’s proprietor — a diver himself — dropping it as he slipped into the ocean.
“It was clearly on his head … he went to go down, and you could see the camera come off his head and it was falling,” he stated. ”
“When it landed, it landed face-up and a little while later you can see a crab approach the camera.”
Kieley determined there was sufficient materials on the cardboard to try to join it again with its proprietor, so he started working.
“Once I saw people on the videos I would pause it, take a screenshot,” he stated.
One of many movies included a tiny snippet of the digicam’s proprietor talking to his girlfriend, which Kieley clipped out as nicely — a selection that proved instrumental in getting the digicam house.
“They weren’t talking very long. All he said is it’s “It’s kind of murky,” he defined.
Kieley posted the fabric to Fb, the place it went semi-viral.
“Hundreds of people, liking, commenting and sharing on Facebook,” he stated.
Finally, the publish ended up in entrance of the digicam proprietor’s mom — who acknowledged her son from the brief snippet of his voice.
“She said it sounded a lot like me, it looked a lot like me,” stated Shay Lalor, who misplaced the digicam in Could.
Kieley and Lalor met up Tuesday afternoon to trade the digicam.
“I thought maybe someone would find it but I thought the chances of me getting it back were pretty slim,” Lalor stated.
“It’s shocking, it’s amazing, I’m stoked.”
It’s not the primary time Kieley’s household has put a digicam from the ocean into its proprietor’s palms.
“My wife found a camera about six months ago,” he stated.
“It actually worked underwater … we took it to a local dive shop here, Wilson’s Diving, and Chris, the owner, had heard about someone losing a camera and he got it back to them.”