How a camera mislaid and a camera found underwater fake a connection
This is a story about how, sometimes, all usually works out a approach it’s ostensible to — interjection to a star of amicable media and maybe usually dual degrees of separation. And it begins with a flowing grave.
The island of Cozumel off Mexico’s Mayan Riviera is a magnet for scuba divers. Its reefs and wildlife attract divers from around a world.
In February, we assimilated a underwater hordes in a swarming sea for a diving vacation. But things started badly.
On my second dive, we climbed behind onto a vessel to learn that my aged though much-loved GoPro camera was no longer trustworthy to my gear. It had been knocked off as we climbed out of a ocean.
Unfortunately, a diving around Cozumel is mostly what is called “drift diving,” where we are pulled along by clever currents. So by a time we beheld a camera was gone, a vessel had already drifted several hundred metres.
I was saddened, though after many years of argent use around a star we was also happy that it had been buried during sea. It seemed suitable and, anyway, I had a larger, newer camera with me to record all a turtles, rays, sharks and moray eels on a Cozumel reefs.
Spotting an upgrade
The subsequent day, we was behind in a H2O on a opposite partial of a reef. we was exploring a coral outcrop when we found what looked like a code new GoPro — sleeker, faster and a lot some-more costly than a one we had usually lost.
It seemed like a star was giving back, after so rigourously holding from me.
But there is a clever gathering among divers about detected gear: what we find, we try to return. Particularly something as costly and personal as an underwater camera.
So once we were out of a water, we started seeking around. we knew a camera had not been underwater for long, so we widespread a word around among all a divers we could find.Â
Perhaps surprisingly — since on a bustling day there can be 40 or some-more boats around a site and 500 divers underwater — I found a owner.
“The usually thing improved than anticipating a camera,” we told him, “is being means to lapse it.”
Strangely, anticipating someone else’s camera lessened a pain of losing my own.
2 degrees of separation
A week later, behind home in Halifax, we get a summary from a Facebook friend.
“Someone found your GoPro,” he said, attaching a screengrab of a posting on a Facebook forum for divers.
In a international-but-small world of divers, it takes usually one or dual degrees of subdivision to make a connection.
I messaged a finder. Meg Reid, it incited out, lives in a tiny city nearby Austin, Texas.
What was she doing diving in Cozumel? She had a story to tell. Reid and her father late to live on a tiny pecan orchard in Rockdale to shun a responsibility of vital in Austin.
Then Meg found that she had breast cancer.
Though their paths didn’t cross, Meg Reid found a camera belonging to a CBC’s David Pate off a seashore of Mexico. He sent her a T-shirt to contend thanks. (Submitted by Meg Reid)
After chemo, a radical double-mastectomy and radiation, she motionless to welcome new challenges, including diving. Her father wasn’t interested, so Meg assimilated adult with a organisation called a Diving Divas — all women over 40.
The outing to Cozumel was her second journey with a Divas and that is where she speckled my camera nestled in a silt by a coral head. So of course, she had to try and find out who owned it. It usually took a integrate of days.
And, of course, we had to find a approach to contend appreciate you; IÂ offered to send her a CBC T-shirt.
“How sweet!” she said. “The fun of returning your camera is interjection enough.”
But she confessed: “You had me during T-shirt.”
So if we occur to revisit a city of Rockdale — race 5,851 — demeanour for a tiny pecan orchard and a poetic lady wearing a CBC T-shirt.
Be certain to contend hi to Meg for me.
Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/reporters-notebook-diving-camera-discovery-1.4560348?cmp=rss