The Taiwanese students, from Yilan County's Yueming Elementary School, found on a beach a case, covered in barnacles. The closer the students looked, the more they thought that the some of the barnacles might need to come off. As it turned out, the case waterproof and inside was a camera, intact.

One of the students, after opening the case, was able to turn the camera on because it was still charged. The students looked at the pictures in an effort to find clues as to the camera's owner.

The students' homeroom teacher, Park Lee, advised them to put a post on Facebook, in both Chinese and Japanese because some of the pictures on the camera were from Japan. The post was shared 12,000 times; and then the camera's owner, a Sophia University student named Serina Tsubakihara, got in touch, saying that she had dropped her camera while scuba diving off Ishigaki Island. That island is 155 miles east of Taiwan, and the camera went missing in September 2015. Ocean currents helped the camera case travel westward, and the Taiwanese students eventually found it.

Tsubakihara is now planning a visit to the school to thank her camera's rescuers in person.