You may think you have looked everywhere for that lost item of yours, but now you need to check Antarctica. That’s thanks to a bloke called David McCaw and his work swipe card.
It’s a tale that’s “absolutely flabbergasted” and “floored” the guy. And fair enough - it’s a tale worthy of a blockbuster movie, starring Chris Pratt as the sea-faring swipe card.
McCaw is a senior music producer at RNZ concert, and in an interview with the station, he explained how his belonging ended up in the most unlikely of places.
In 2003, David’s car was robbed. The burglars took his suitcase and threw it into the Wellington harbour, where someone recovered it and handed it to the cops. It was soaking and there was no swipe card in it, just some “soggy” paperwork, David recalls.
Over a decade later, in 2016, NIWA diver Rod Budd is researching the sea floor under an Antarctic iceberg - 4,000 kilometres away from Wellington.
“I saw what I thought was a credit card,” he said, "but it was a little too dark to tell so I just picked it up and put it in my pocket. It was unusual because you don't usually see rubbish and things down there.”
"It wasn't till I got back to the surface, and I cleaned it up and I could see that it was a Radio New Zealand security card. I could quite clearly see David's name printed on it. I showed it to the rest of the team, and we thought we should send it back to him sometime."
They got back to NZ later that year, but didn’t immediately get the card to David. Instead they just left it in a box. Eventually, they did find him and he got his card around two weeks ago, 21 years after losing it.
David reunited with his swipe card. Credit: RNZ via NIWA / Rebekah Parsons-King
Experts don’t really have an explanation for it either. If it sunk or was attached to something floating, it should have taken a lot longer than 13 years for ocean currents to take it from Wellington's harbour to Antarctica.
I need to message NIWA and see if they can find my odd socks under any icebergs.
