If you’re like me, you’re probably really in the mood for a story involving the planet’s sea life that isn’t a tragedy. Fortunately, that’s exactly what the Miami Herald published this morning in the tale of Paul Shultz, a Coast Guard investigator who found a camera that washed up in Key West. Proving true to his job title, Shultz used the clues in the pictures inside and the help of people on the internet to locate the camera’s owners on the other side of the world. It’s a story that has everything: mystery, the kindness of strangers, and even a demonstration of a hungry sea turtle’s cinematography skills!

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When Shultz found the camera, it was covered in six months worth of sea growth but the camera inside was still working thanks to its protective water-proof case. He turned it on and started checking out the contents. At first he became concerned for the camera’s owners when he saw a video inside of what appeared to be

an underwater struggle. He watched closely and eventually decided that the footage was actually captured after a sea turtle tried to eat the camera and accidentally turned it on (amazing video clip is below!).

After he had made sure that the camera didn’t contain some kind of Blair Witch Project/Jaws hybrid and that the owners were probably still alive, Shultz decided to try to find them. His only clues were the pictures they had taken.

From the Miami Herald:

There were photos of two men preparing to scuba dive and a towheaded family nestled together on a couch. There was a mysterious relic settled deep into the sea floor. And even a puzzling video clip of splashing water that appeared to have been taken as the camera thrashed around under the control of something that wasn’t human.”There was nothing on the pictures that said this camera belongs to so and so,” Shultz said.After looking through the pictures, Shultz adopted the screen name of “Aquahound” and took his hunt online.He uploaded the images on Scubaboard.com, hoping some diving aficionados could help identify where they were taken. Within days, the Internet sleuths had parsed the pictures and found some clues all pointing to Aruba, a Dutch island off Venezuela’s coast that’s 1,100 miles from Key West.There was a plane’s tail number – and a computer search showed the aircraft was in

Aruba the day the photo was taken. There was a blue-roofed building that searchers pinpointed to the island using Google Earth. And there was a school poster written in Dutch.But could the camera make such a trip? Villy Kourafalou, an associate professor of physical oceanography at the University of Miami, said such an odyssey is possible. The buoyancy of the plastic case combined with various currents could have taken the camera to Key West, she told The Associated Press in an e-mail.With Shultz’s search narrowed, the resolution came quickly. He posted the pictures on the travel websites Cruisecritic and Aruba.com, and within two days was contacted by an Aruban woman who said she recognized the children in some of the photos as classmates of her son.She contacted the family, the de Bruins, and all the pieces came together.”I have a smile on my face … I can’t stop laughing about it,” Dick de Bruin said in a phone interview from Aruba. “It’s really big news (on the island) and in Europe.”

Yes, some stories just work out better than others. A Dutch family can lose a camera scuba diving in Aruba and still get it back but I will never again see the wallet I left in a cab somewhere. Oh well.

As promised, here is the incredible video that the sea turtle took. While the turtle isn’t as skilled as

this filmmaking octopus, the video is at least better than half of the movies in the theater this summer!

(Photo via the Webshots gallery Shultz created to find the camera’s owners. Also, H/T Pat’s Papers.)

Tags: Coast Guard, Miami Herald, Netherlands, Scuba Diving