Diver Loses Camera to the Ocean – It Returns With Stunning Footage
When an underwater videographer attached his Insta360 X4 camera to a fishing line to capture interesting footage he didn’t reckon on it falling into the ocean.
But that’s what happened to Peter Mieras as he was fishing for a good shot in Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, Canada and it sank into 30 feet of water.
“I thought, that sucks,” he tells CTV News. But as he stood there pondering whether to dive in after his action sports camera, something stirred in front of him.
“(It was) a little bit like a National Geographic moment,” Mieras says. Just after it happened, a flock of birds and a few sea lions began attacking a bait ball, prompting him to grab another camera to film the action.
The action attracted a far larger animal: a humpback whale which appeared just feet away from where Mieras and his wife Kathy were standing. The pair watched for two hours as a feeding frenzy took place in front of them. Afterward, Mieras was able to retrieve his camera and was stunned by what he saw.
The footage shows the bait ball blocking out the Sun above as a humpback whale charges at it, sending the fish scattering. Later, sea lions and the humpback can be seen hunting for fish.
“We just burst with glee,” Kathy tells CTV. “We just watched it over and over again because we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing.”
On his YouTube channel, Mieras describes it as a “very lucky capture of some whale action underwater just below our dock.”
“I dropped the Insta360 X4 off the dock at 30 feet deep and just let it run,” says Mieras. “It ran for one hour and 45 minutes and after a while, all the underwater life showed up.”
The great thing about action cams is their ability to go pretty much anywhere. In 2023, PetaPixel reported on a man who dropped his GoPro into the Gulf of Mexico after wondering “what was going on” in the ocean.
Similarly, a guest on a cruise ship dropped a GoPro into the ocean below and captured fascinating footage of sharks.
Image credits: Peter Mieras/Subvision Productions.
