The underwater depths hold many secrets that may be subtle or surprising.
In the River Thames in London, England last November, police looking for evidence against suspected assailants of a convicted robber in July 2019 found an iPad.
Despite having been underwater more than five years, officers were able to clean the device and recover a pink Vodafone SIM card containing data that revealed the murder plot against 41-year-old Paul Allen by Louis Ahearne, 36, his brother Stewart Ahearne, 46, and Daniel Kelly, 46, the Daily Mail reports.
Allen had been convicted in the biggest heist in England, that of a money depot where 53 million pounds was taken in 2006. He was released in 2016.
The iPad was used by the suspects to monitor the tracker device they had planted in Allen’s car, while call data revealed the conversations of the suspects and their purchase of weapons from an online store.
Allen survived the shooting at his home but was left paralyzed.
Four months before the January trial of the suspects, one of them told police they had been on a street by the Thames, leading investigators to suspect they dumped evidence of the shooting in the river which prompted the search that yielded the gadget.
On 24 March, a jury found the Ahearnes and Kelly guilty of shooting Allen. Their sentencing is scheduled on 25 April.
Meanwhile, photos from an underwater camera accidentally found in a lake in Scotland early this month revealed the fascinating depths that lore says is the home of the Loch Ness monster.
The propeller of an autonomous marine submersible known as Boaty McBoatface, which was operated by the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, caught the mooring of the camera and it was brought to the surface.
The camera was amazingly intact after 55 years. It was one of several submerged in the Loch Ness in the 1970s by Chicago biologist Roy Mackal to shoot the Loch Ness monster.
Around that time, cameras were manually operated with flashbulbs for lighting. Its mooring, when snagged, triggered the camera.
Twenty-four films in the recovered camera were developed and the photos showed only the murky depths of the lake. There was no sign of the Loch Ness monster.