Two years after his fishing trawler, the Bootlegger, sank off Vancouver Island, artist Paul Burgoyne has been reunited with a precious piece of his past thanks to an extraordinary underwater discovery. In May, a team of researchers from the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre—including students Tella Osler and Beau Doherty, along with Dive Safety Officer Siobhan Gray—located Burgoyne’s underwater camera resting twelve meters beneath the surface near Aguilar Point.
Despite being submerged for such a long time, the camera was covered in barnacles and small marine life but remarkably, the 8 GB Lexar Platinum II memory card inside remained undamaged. Marine ecology expert Professor Isabelle M. Côté carefully examined the recovered files and found the data perfectly preserved. She shared a family portrait online, hoping to connect with the owner.
Shortly thereafter, a member of the Bamfield Coast Guard, who had previously helped rescue Burgoyne during the sinking of the Bootlegger, recognized the photo and reached out to him with the exciting news.
Burgoyne, who lost not only his boat but also countless irreplaceable photos and a video documenting the stormy seas that led to the vessel’s demise, was amazed by the memory card’s resilience. “It’s incredible that, after two years at the bottom of the ocean, this little memory card still worked,” he said. He looks forward to revisiting the emotional snapshots of his parents’ ashes being scattered at Lake of the Woods, along with the haunting final footage of the Bootlegger’s last journey.
This unexpected recovery underscores the surprising durability of modern electronic devices and serves as a powerful reminder that sometimes memories thought lost forever can be recovered in the most unexpected ways. The discovery is a testament to both human perseverance and the persistence of memory—even beneath the depths of the sea.