Is this you? The internet wants to give you back your GoPro
A software developer is trying to find the owner of a camera he found in the sea in Thailand
This story will help you recover (a little bit) of faith in humanity and forget about all those horror stories of stolen or lost cellphones that are never returned. A user of the image-sharing website Imgur, whose user name is American McGee, explains in a post that has been viewed more than 400,000 times that on April 19 he found a GoPro camera floating 10 meters off the coast of Krabi, in Thailand, while he was spear fishing. In fact, he nearly speared it, he explains.
McGee fired the camera up to see if he could find any clues as to who it belongs to and to get it back to them. And yes, this McGee is the videogame designer who was involved in Quake and Doom and also responsible for a famous adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.
Here’s what we know so far (below is the gallery with all the photos that McGee posted on Imgur to illustrate the search process):
- The camera had been in the water for three days, based on the time it was last used.
- Its owner was traveling through Thailand with some friends (and his GoPro) during the Songkran festival, which is well known for its waterfights during street parties.
- McGee examined the photos on the memory card of the camera and saw that in one of them you could see an Alcampo supermarket – suggesting that the owner is Spanish, or at least, lives in Spain.
- More clues: a marina located close to the supermarket. Using that information and Google Maps, McGee worked out that the photo had been taken near Port Sa Platja, in Valencia. One of the commenters on the Imgur post has said that he lives in that town and will be looking for the owner.
about verne
According to McGee, in an update of the post, a representative from GoPro has told him that they will give a new camera to the owner of the lost one to speed up the search process. McGee has promised to send them both, full of photos of this process. Yes, that’s right, he won’t be keeping the new one or the old one. That’s how it’s done, McGee…
So to sum up: if anyone knows this guy, get in touch with him. There are people out there willing to return your GoPro (and give you a new one) whatever it takes.
