Don't drop your camera!

If you ever wanted to know what would happen to your camera after dropping it into the ocean well, here you go!

I found this Canon PowerShot A75 in about 15 feet of water in the largest lagoon in the world - the Kwajalein Lagoon located in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The lens was expanded so the poor chap who dropped it was in the action of taking a shot - or so it initially appeared. I also wondered if photographs from the memory card would be retrievable after months and months underwater. I patiently sat the camera on my windowsill and waited for it to dry. As I walked away I couldn´t help but think how fitting it would be to see this doomed camera in the hands of one of those hopeless pirates in the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean!

After a few weeks drying out I finally opened the memory card door. I had thoughts of saving the day and becoming another Timex story, you know, "takes a licking and keeps on ticking" - only I´d become famous and wealthy with the phrase, "Memories preserved after being submerged", after contacting Canon and the manufacturer of the memory card with my pitch-line. Much to my disappointment, though, there was nothing there! The slot was empty! :( How could that be I thought to myself! I mean the lens was fully expanded which means the camera had to have been turned on. And if the camera was turned on in such a beautiful place in the world, the Marshall Islands, surely the poor guy/gal who dropped it was in the process of snapping a few shots: perhaps of a small deserted island, dolphins following his or her boat, a large Yellow-fin tuna he or she had just pulled in or, perhaps the owner was preparing to place the camera into an underwater housing unit to take some brilliant underwater photographs while snorkeling or scuba-diving. Of course this is all speculation and we will never know the true story of how this poor PowerShot A75´s demise led it to the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean. Isn´t it fun to fantasize though? I think so!

Just as I was about to discard this digital camera for good I got one final thought! I had to force open the battery housing door to verify my last-second suspicion! This camera takes AA batteries. Upon doing so this final suspicion proved to be the most logical. There were no batteries! If there were no batteries then how could the lens be expanded ready for a shot? Perhaps this camera was thrown into the ocean on purpose. What would you do if you were on a boat ride in some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world and your camera froze up on you and stopped working? A South Pacific, tropical environment is notorious for reeking havoc on electronics. I think I would have been irate!!!

I have come to the conclusion that the owner of this camera grew so frustrated over its non performance, for what ever reasons, that he/she threw it into the lagoon after salvaging the memory card and batteries.

In the end I didn´t have it in me to simply dump this camera into some trashcan to be burned and totally destroyed - lost forever. After closing the memory card door and battery housing door I threw it back into the lagoon with all my might with the thought that someday in the near future some other person snorkeling or diving in the area would find it and that this person would go through the process I did trying to figure the camera´s history!

Even though this camera may not be taking pictures anymore, it is still serving a purpose! :)