Strange

Sea Turtle Helps Owner Find Lost Camera

by Jordan Yerman | June 10, 2010 at 09:15 am

1818 views | 29 Recommendations | 2 comments

Sea Turtle Helps Carry Digital Camera from Aruba to Florida

How does a digital camera get from Aruba to Florida? By hitching a ride on a sea turtle. Dutch tourist Dick De Bruin dropped his waterproof camera overboard while on vacation. As the camera floated in the sea, its strap entangled a passing sea turtle.

The turtle activated the camera while trying to free itself, and filmed its journey north until the battery went flat.

At some point, the turtle ditched the camera, which washed ashore in Key West, where it was found by US Coast Guard investigator Paul Schultz, known as Aquahound1 on Youtube. Schultz posted the segment of the video depicting the sea turtle.

The sea turtle video was circulated, eventually coming to the attention of Dick de Bruin, who goes by BruinAruba. Schultz shipped De Bruin's camera back home. All's well that ends well, thanks to a fortuitous encounter with a sea turtle.

This is hilarious! I was just approached by a woman at school who asked me if I lost my camera and we have. That was in november and she told me that a turtle caught it and that our pictures were on it. I can't stop smiling, this is unbelieveble! All the way from Aruba! I gave my adress to this woman so she will contact you aquahound1. Thanks a lot!

Mr Shultz charged up the battery and found a series of photos capturing various Aruban landmarks.

He posted the footage on YouTube along with a brief note about its contents in a bid to trace its owner, De Telegraaf said.

The source above neglects to show the actual video footage captured by the intrepid sea turtle, but we got you covered.

The Youtube video has gotten over 100,000 pageviews, as well as a multitude of comments, including such gems as:

I like turtles! & Zombies too....

1 See all footage | View Slideshow

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anarkissed

at 10:07 on June 10th, 2010

Thanks, that's one of the neatest stories I've seen in a while! Turtle isn't much of a cinematographer but it's great. I wonder if this will turn up on Sherman's Lagoon?

Jordan Yerman

at 10:24 on June 10th, 2010

Underwater photography and cinematography is harder than it looks... I've actually seen worse footage than the sea turtle's. Considering the turtle most likely had never used a digital camera before, it didn't do half bad.