The tribulations of a mischievous camera

This is quite an improbable story. Earlier this year we had lost some instruments: a camera and an acoustic recorder. This was quite an unfortunate event, but since then we moved on, learned from our mistakes and improved both the instruments themselves and the way we deploy them. It’s been more than 6 months now that these instruments were likely living their own lives drifting away in the ocean and I had no hope whatsoever to get them back at any point.

On a Tuesday afternoon I received an email from Brian (a lab mate diver who has helped on almost every deployment of the XAV array): “Hey check these pictures, I think this is your camera”. Wait...what? My camera? I open the pictures and yes! That was it! The camera we lost 6 months ago ended up on a beach at Clover point in the south of Victoria, about 50 km from the deployment location. Then Brian tells me the full story. A lady doing her morning walk, found the camera on the beach, picked it up, saw the sticker for the University of Victoria and called the biology department to report it. She didn’t know what to do with it so she just left it somewhere obvious on the rocks so we could come pick it up. Brian and Micah (another lab mate) went straight away to the beach to pick it up but couldn’t find it. So, the camera was lost, found, and lost again… Great…This camera was really playing tricks on us! Fortunately, the same lady called me the next morning to tell me that she found it (again) and took it with her this time. Someone had taken the camera, opened it and left it further down the beach close to a construction site. Amazingly, everything was still intact inside. I was even able to get the video data it collected.

Looking at the footage, we now know what happened to the instrument. After a week of deployment, the current increased substantially, and waves got bigger and bigger which pulled on the line attached to the surface buoy. As a result, the instruments started to drift away by doing little hops. It is good to understand what happened. We are still missing the hydrophones so, these data are not too useful for us, but the good thing is that I was able to salvage all the electronic components and batteries of the camera to build a new one.

Case closed.