《TAIPEI TIMES》 Pupils seeking owner of camera found on beach

‘UNAVOIDABLE’: Students have gone through all of the photographs stored in the camera’s memory card, which might seem somewhat inappropriate, a teacher said

By Chang Yi-chen and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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Elementary-school students taking part in a beach clean-up in Yilan County yesterday found a functional Canon G12 camera and uploaded its contents to Facebbok in hopes of finding its owner.

Ho Chao-en （何兆恩）, a fifth-grade student at Yuehming Elementary School in the county’s Suao Township （蘇澳）, thought he had found a weed-encrusted box upon finding the camera’s underwater housing, and was surprised to find the camera inside after opening it, the school said.

After returning to the school, Ho and his classmates discovered that the camera was still charged and its memory card was intact.

An inspection of the photographs showed that the last one was taken on Sept. 7, 2015, the school said.

After viewing all the photographs — including underwater and scenery shots, photographs of a Japanese street and family photographs — the students surmised that the camera’s owner might be from Japan’s Ishikagi Island, and might have lost the camera while scuba diving there, after which the camera drifted to Yilan, the school said.

The students posted photographs and information about the camera on Facebook, class instructor Lee Kung-yuan （李公元） said, adding that he hopes that the Japanese media would help spread the news.

“We hope that the owner would learn that their camera has been found and would contact us for its retrieval,” Lee said.

While it seems somewhat inappropriate to go through another person’s photographs, it was unavoidable, Lee said, adding that the entire class looked at the photographs together.

He has also given an assignment for the students to come up with a hypothetical result for the incident based on their creativity, so that they would feel they are included, Lee said.

Meanwhile, netizens have been helping spread the news of the camera’s discovery.

“My coach in Japan just texted me that he actually knows someone in the photographs and that the person was working at a scuba gear shop in Naha,” a netizen wrote.

Another netizen suggested reaching out to Taiwan’s Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh （謝長廷） to help bring the matter to a speedy conclusion.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES