Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/05/scuba-diver-found-200-apple-watches-at-the-bottom-of-a-chain-of-lakes.html
…
I’ve gone magnet fishing for recovery twice. Once for my Benchmade pocket knife, once for my Mtutoyo calipers. No bites. I do have a divers card now though.
Hmmm, I AM currently looking for interesting work, and I have a few useful certs. I could locate tractors & livestock lost in sinkholes all over Florida, I suppose.
Still…remote number-crunching is what I do best. So conflicted.
I bet that flip phone still works
Two-hundred. Takes a lot of practice.
I wonder if Apple cares about the missibility of their watches in water, or if it’s an opportunity for them to sell a new watch.
Now look here, it’s not Apple’s fault if you strap the watch around your wrist the wrong way.
He hasn’t sold anything that he finds—including a white gold Cartier ring, he notes—unless he can identify its rightful owner.
Wait, once he finds the owner he then sells the item? You’d think he only sells items he can’t find an owner for.
statistical analysis of the best dive locations for suken treasure?
I took it to imply that he only sells the object if the owner is a bit of an asshole.
I took this as a tyop/missing word(s) thing.
Let’s ask the author … @pesco ?
I found your wedding ring, do you want it?
Hell no, I threw that thing in a lake so I’d never see it again!
I was with the first group of people to scuba dive last year in our kind of local quarry. A couple of people with us went to the area where there is a cliff that people jump off and found 6 or 7 apple watches in about 5 minutes. There is a lost and found you can drop stuff off that you find underwater and it is absolutely full of Apple Watches.
We have another quarry that has cliff jumping but no longer has scuba diving and I always wonder what it looks like down there, it is about 40 ft deep under the cliff I believe.
What both of these anecdotes are telling me is that people don’t give a crap about losing their Apple watches!
Sauron, “Bring it to me”.
"Are you sure we’re not lost?
“Don’t worry, according to my Apple Watch, our destination is right around this AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE” (splash)
The straps are utterly shit but scuba diving to find them isn’t practical/is expensive so they end up disposable.
I dropped my wedding ring off a dock on a scuba trip. My friend and I spent about 20 minutes hovering above a mud bottom trying not to touch the mud (instant cloud). When I saw the ring it was half buried much like the opening scene of Lord of the Rings.
I am still wearing the ring today (23 years later). I defeated its escapist tendencies by gaining 40 lbs.
I think I’d value it enough to not jump in the water with it.
Two friends and I were at some dive steps (also a popular tubing site) getting ready to submerge, when a guy came over sheepishly to ask if we could look for his wedding ring there. His wife was a couple feet away looking ready to smack him. It was a mud bottom, and we took turns for about 25 minutes working a pattern in a 3-foot area.
We got lucky; I shook some muddy tree roots and felt a vibration fall through them. Plucking that ring from the mud felt precisely like a gollum moment. Worth it to see her face light up, although I’m sure the husband is still hearing about it.