A couple of screenshots, a few seconds of audio and a huge social media reaction were all it took to get a lost camera from the bottom of the ocean back to its owner in less than 48 hours.
As it turns out, the camera had been lost for nearly a year.
Diver Ken Kieley can’t believe how fast it all played out.
Kieley and his wife were diving off Ogden Point in Victoria on Sunday and were scouring the seafloor for octopus dens when they discovered a GoPro about 30 feet below the surface.
Kieley said when he got home, he discovered some water had gotten into the camera, but its SD card was in perfect shape.
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On the card were several videos, including a recording of the camera’s owner — a diver himself — losing 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 said. ”
“When it landed, it landed face-up and a little while later you can see a crab approach the camera.”
Kieley decided there was enough material on the card to try and connect it back with its owner, so he got to work.
“Once I saw people on the videos I would pause it, take a screenshot,” he said.
One of the videos included a tiny snippet of the camera’s owner speaking to his girlfriend, which Kieley clipped out as well — a choice that proved instrumental in getting the camera home.
“They weren’t talking very long. All he said is it’s “It’s kind of murky,” he explained.
Kieley posted the material to Facebook, where it went semi-viral.
“Hundreds of people, liking, commenting and sharing on Facebook,” he said.
Eventually, the post ended up in front of the camera owner’s mother — who recognized her son from the short snippet of his voice.
“She said it sounded a lot like me, it looked a lot like me,” said Shay Lalor, who lost the camera in May.
Kieley and Lalor met up Tuesday afternoon to exchange the camera.
“I thought maybe someone would find it but I thought the chances of me getting it back were pretty slim,” Lalor said.
“It’s shocking, it’s amazing, I’m stoked.”
It’s not the first time Kieley’s family has put a camera from the sea into its owner’s hands.
“My wife found a camera about six months ago,” he said.
“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.”
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