petergovaars

The power of the Internet is amazing. Just yesterday we reported on how a man found a battered memory card that apparently spent four years in the ocean and recovered 104 photos from it. After the story went viral and was widely reported, the owner of the camera has now been found. The girl nearest the camera in the photo above was visiting relatives four years ago when she accidentally dropped the camera into the Pacific Ocean from a wharf Santa Cruz.

We've heard of digital photos being recovered after lost cameras drift for 1,000 miles (in underwater casing) or spend a year at the bottom of the ocean floor, but is there any hope for a camera that experiences four years of abuse at sea? Turns out there is. A man named Peter Govaars was walking along a beach in California when he stumbled upon a battered camera "skeleton" with a memory card still attached. He took the SD card home, took it apart, spent 30 minutes cleaning it, and was surprised to discover 104 photographs taken within a 2 week period in June 2007.