The diver who pulled the barnacle-covered camera from the ocean floor expected nothing more than another piece of debris swallowed by the Pacific. But after rinsing it off and checking the memory card, he stopped cold — staring back at him was a clear family portrait, smiling faces preserved after two years underwater. That single image sparked a search for the camera’s owner, a man who had survived a shipwreck and believed every memory he’d captured that day had been lost forever.
The camera belonged to Vancouver artist Paul Burgoyne, whose boat, the Bootlegger, went down off Vancouver Island during a trip to his summer home. The wreck took with it priceless photos, including emotional images from a ceremony scattering his parents’ ashes. Students from the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre found the camera 12 meters down, covered in sea life but still intact. Miraculously, the 8GB Lexar memory card worked perfectly, preserving every photo and video Paul thought the ocean had taken for good.
Professor Isabelle M. Côté posted one of the recovered photos online, hoping to find the owner. Fate intervened when a member of the Bamfield coast guard recognized Burgoyne — the same man he had rescued the night of the shipwreck. When Paul learned the camera had been found, he was stunned, calling the recovery of the images “wonderful” and admitting he’d never expected to see them again. The photos brought back a rush of memories from the calm moments before the wreck to the chaos that followed.
One video showed the violent seas that swallowed the Bootlegger; others captured the last smiles of a family honoring loved ones. What seemed gone forever had survived against all odds, proving not only the durability of a tiny memory card but the mysterious ways the ocean sometimes gives back what it takes. The diver had no idea when he first picked up that camera, but he was holding a man’s lost history — a story the sea had guarded, then returned.