Drop your phone in the ocean and for most people, that’s the end of the story. Not for Henry Wang. The North Vancouver diver has spent the past decade retrieving phones, and the memories within them, off the floors of B.C.’s lakes and oceans. “I’ll do a single dive and I’ll pull out, like, 10 phones, just in one dive,” Wang said. Earlier this week, that mission took him into the water at False Creek, where a tourist’s phone had slipped beneath the surface during a visit to Vancouver. “They came here for the World Cup and then they did a road trip all the way to Banff and back to enjoy our beautiful country,” he said. “And of course, all of the photos were on that phone.” In a video Wang posted to social media, the tourist from Toronto said his group had been taking photos the night before and the phone “just slipped out” of their hands. ‘Memories, always’ Wang was able to locate the phone quickly. It was still working. “I mean, it’s an iPhone 16 Pro Max, so, you know, it’s not cheap, right?” he said. “But it’s the memories, always.” Wang is often called back to the same spots, such as Lonsdale Quay, where warning signs haven’t stopped phones from slipping through the slats in the benches. He also often gets called to Science World. ‘Phone number is on the wall’ “They drop so many phones, people getting in and out of dragon boats and the rental paddle boards, that my phone number is on the wall,” he said. Wang spends much of his time collecting trash and debris from bodies of water as part of the group Divers for Cleaner Lakes and Oceans. While he usually charges $100 per hour to retrieve a phone, if he’s diving to pick up trash, he’ll pick up the phone for free. “I’ll just remember and I’ll just get it back to you,” he said. Of all the recoveries, one has stuck with Wang: a phone belonging to a couple who had thousands of baby photos they hadn’t backed up. “The very next time I saw the husband, he had his new phone in a lanyard on a pouch, fully secure to his neck,” he said. As we head into what Wang calls “cellphone recovery season,” he has one reminder. “If you’re near water, hang onto your stuff,” he said.
