Man whose card was stolen finds it 13 years later — but 2,400 miles away on the Antarctic seafloor

Talk about finding a needle in a haystack—a man who lost his swipe card in the vast ocean, surprisingly finds it 13 years later. David McCaw, a senior music producer, was both astonished and thrilled to have his long-lost security card returned after it was found 2,400 miles away in Antarctic waters. McCaw had lost the card in 2003 when his car was broken into, his briefcase thrown into the harbor in Wellington, New Zealand.

Rod Budd, a technician at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), made the incredible discovery while examining the Antarctic seafloor. As he studied the creatures underwater, he spotted the lost card lying on the seabed, as reported by Newsweek. McCaw recalled, “My briefcase was sitting in the passenger [foot]well of the car... so obviously someone saw it and broke the window and took the briefcase." A few days after the theft, the police returned the briefcase that had held the swipe card, but it was soaked through and empty, as reported by NZ Herald. McCaw shared, “I got a call about three days later saying, ‘We’ve got your briefcase, come and get it.’ They said someone had handed it in."

He added, “They said someone had recovered it from the harbor, I don’t know exactly where, and it had seawater and the remaining documents were soggy.” Fast forward to 2016, Budd said in a NIWA statement, "The visibility wasn't great. At first, I thought it was a credit card. I dived down to retrieve it, put it in my pocket, and carried on with my work. It's not unusual for items to fall under the ice, especially in this part of Antarctica where lots of scientists work, as well as its proximity to Scott's historic hut, which gets a fair few visitors." 

Budd recounted, "David wasn't on the expedition with us, so I presumed he'd been down in Antarctica that season and dropped the card at some point. I made a mental note to return it to him once I got back to New Zealand." NIWA held onto the card for nearly eight years before they were able to locate McCaw. But when they eventually found him, they discovered to their amazement that he had never been in Antarctica. The discovery surprised the researchers as they wondered how a small thing could have traveled more than 2,400 miles.

While the card simply may have ridden the ocean currents, NIWA principal scientist, Craig Stephens, believes that the likelihood of this was incredibly slim. He traced the card’s possible journey, starting from where it sank near the canyons off Wellington’s harbor. The card may have gone past Samoa and toward the North Pacific after being carried into the Western Boundary Current. It would have then crossed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and passed through Indonesia before arriving at Cape Evans. Stephens also believes that the card should have remained on the surface, buoyant.