Visionary Sea Turtle
Spotted, the next big thing on the director scene. In the deep tropical waters of the Caribbean a sea turtle has found a waterproof camera and somehow activated the device, filming itself and is now a star on YouTube.
US Coast Guard agent Paul Schultz found a digital camera in a waterproof case back in May on a beach in Key West, Florida. Coast Guard Schultz posted the images he found on its memory chip on the internet in an attempt to find its owner.
In a video clip dated January 2010 “a turtle came across the camera, and it’s really hard to tell how, but it turns the camera on and recorded itself swimming with the camera”, Schultz told AFP.
“When I saw the video, I thought first that someone was getting attacked by a sea creature,” Schultz said.
“The last thing the camera owner did was shoot a video underwater, and then it goes right into the next video with the camera turning around in the water,” Schultz told AFP.
After a long quest to find the owner Schultz discovered the camera belonged to a Dutch navy sailor who lost the camera whilst diving off the island of Aruba in November.
As the crow flies, Aruba, off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, is some 1800 kilometres from Key West.
The camera would of likely have taken a roundabout tour on the Loop Current, which would have taken it from Aruba to the coast of Central America, past Belize and the Yucatan peninsula, around the western coast of Cuba, into the Gulf Stream and on to the Florida Keys.
“I’m totally amazed about this,” Schultz said.