This Apple Watch spent a day in the sea and still works

Apple Watch ultra underwater
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple Watches might be water resistant, but few people would expect to be able to lose one in the ocean and still get it back, let alone have it still working when they do.

Even the best Apple Watch of all, the Apple Watch Ultra, might not be expected to survive spending a night underwater in those conditions. But that didn't stop a Brazilian teacher from being reunited with their Apple Watch after it was found by a fisherman.

The Apple Watch continued to work throughout and was mailed back to its owner unscathed.

Lost and found

G1 and AppleInsider report that the watch was dropped off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil while its wearer was on a schooner ride. The wearable slipped off his arm and quickly sunk, leaving its owner to think that it was gone forever.

But the next day it appeared online and nowhere near where it was lost. In fact, it was back on dry land.

"The teacher said he activated an option called 'lost mode' and put some of his personal information," G1 reports via machine translation. The next day the man received a message via Instagram saying that his watch was ready to be returned.

"Nowadays everything is difficult. When people find something and the owner goes after it, they usually want a value, something in exchange or they don't return it, they don't get in touch," said Jefferson Rocha.

The watch was returned just as it was found, working perfectly and ready to go on more adventures with its owner.

The report doesn't say what kind of Apple Watch was lost, but the photo used in the G1 report suggests that it was an Apple Watch Series 3 or older judging by the size and shape of the case and display. All the more impressive that it survived so well.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.