Nikon Camera lost at sea turns up 1,100 miles away

Coast Guard Investigator Paul Shultz came across a red Nikon L18 camera while he was walking along a Key West, Florida marina on May 16th. The camera, which was covered by a beat up underwater case, wound up being in superb condition. Shultz, with no luck identifying the owner with the pics on the memory card, turned to Scubaboard.com with some of the pics. It took only a matter of days until the pics were identified to be taken in Aruba approximately 1,100 miles from where the camera was located.

Schultz would then go on to post the pics at Aruba.com which would be identified by a woman who recognized some of the children in the photos. As it turns out, the camera belonged to Dick de Bruin, a sergeant in the Royal Dutch Navy. Bruin was trying to salvage an anchor from the USS Powell for a WWII memorial when his camera floated away.

It gets better. The craziest part of the story is that during the camera’s 1,100 mile journey, it happened to get caught in the hands (or shell) of a sea turtle as the camera was filming video. Who knows, maybe the sea turtle was a mutant teenager with opposable thumbs and had a knack for technology. Here’s some of the footage that was caught:

Via [Petapixel]