Dick de Bruin dropped his waterproof video camera when diving off the Caribbean island of Aruba. He thought he would never see it again.

But the Dutchman has been reunited with his property after a sea turtle picked up the camera and swam 1770km before abandoning it off the coast of Florida.

In its efforts to disentangle itself from the camera strap, the turtle activated the video camera and took pictures.

The camera was found covered in growth last month in Key West, Florida by Paul Shultz, an investigator with the US Coastguard, who downloaded the video and placed it - where else? - on YouTube. Shultz also found pictures of Aruba, which he posted on Youtube, along with a note explaining how he found the camera.

In due course, news of the YouTube vid made its way to de Bruin, who stepped forward to claim his camera.

You can catch the sea turtle video here.

de Bruin found it "hilarious", according to De Telegraaf. We wouldn't go that far.

Via News.com.au and De Telegraaf.

Bootnote

OK, so it probably floated most of the way. We don't care.