Friday, June 11, 2010

Accidental crittercam!


The video above is a little puzzling until you know the story behind it - a story that needed a post of its own on Quigley's Cabinet.... Royal Dutch Navy sergeant Dick de Bruin was in Aruba last November. As he was diving to photograph a World War II shipwreck, he dropped his buoyant underwater camera and it floated away. At some point, the strap caught on the shell of a sea turtle. The turtle bit the camera, either to jettison it or see if it was edible, and in the process accidentally turned it on. Unable to dislodge it, he towed it the 1,100 miles to a marina in Key West, Florida, where it was found in mid-May by U.S. Coast Guard criminal investigator Paul Shultz. Curious, Shultz charged the battery to find that the camera contained images of Aruban landmarks - and the 5 minutes of the 6-month journey that the turtle inadvertently recorded! He used clues in the photos (the dive company logo on a van, the name of a school, the registration number on an aircraft) to post them on appropriate social websites and uploaded the video to YouTube with the following description in hopes of finding the camera's owner:
"I found a camera and Ikelite waterproof housing washed ashore in Key West, FL. Pictures indicate it floated all the way from Aruba over a period of 6 months. Half way through the journey, this sea turtle came across it and tried to eat it, turning the camera on and recording himself."
The story and video were seen by residents of Aruba, who brought it to the attention of
de Bruin, who contacted Shultz, who returned the camera by Federal Express. The camera has presumably had a less turbulent return journey and the men can now tell the greatest story since the invention of crittercams!

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