A Bunch Of Divers Listened To A Drunk In A Bar And Found Nearly 100 Beers In A Canadian Swamp

A beer truck crashed, and now there's swamp beer for everyone.

Mike Kelly and a group of commercial divers were recently in Prince Rupert, B.C., on a trip to harvest sea urchins. The weather kept them off the water, so they hit the local bars. That's when an intoxicated local told them a story they couldn't ignore.

Mike Kelly

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"One of the guys started chatting with this super drunk dude who was talking about a beer truck that had gone off the road and there was beer all in a swamp," Kelly told BuzzFeed Canada.

The man at the bar said the crash scattered the precious cargo all over the road and in the swamp. He claimed he and others had filled a pickup truck with hundreds of bottles of beer.

Kelly and his fellow divers were skeptical, but they got directions from the guy just in case.

The next morning, they debated whether the story was credible enough to warrant a trip. That's when one crew member, who had gone to a different bar the night before, told them what happened when he'd tried to order a Corona.

"I was at the Belmont and the bartender said they were out of [some] beer because the delivery truck never showed up," he told the group.

They immediately grabbed their diving gear and drove to the spot.

After a bit of driving they found a spot with telltale skidmarks and broken bottles. Kelly and another man suited up. "As we reached into the mud we noticed that in the crash a bunch of cases had been thrown into this gooey swampy mud."

Bob Shaw

They started puling out bottles one by one.

"We spent maybe 45 minutes to an hour there," Kelly said. "Two of us had dry suits and were filling mesh bags and handing it to the other guys. We just continued doing this until we were bored."

Bob Shaw

Kelly said the dirty water was about two feet deep, and a real step down from the ocean they dive in to harvest sea urchins for sale.

"We braved oily, toxic swamp water to rescue these beers," he said. "It was really an environmental clean up project."

To keep the beer scanvengers motivated, the guys on the side of the road blasted music from their truck. Here's Kelly and a colleague bobbing for beer to "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred.

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Because why not?

"We ended up with just under 100 beers, some of which we drank while diving in the swamp," Kelly said. "We were just gonna go back home but decided this was way to good to end. So we drove three hours to Kitimat and drank with my buddy’s cousin for the night."

Bob Shaw

The six of them polished off all the bottles. Kelly said there was, however, one downside to all that free beer.

"When you’re sober you are really quite careful about wiping swamp slime off the tip of your beer," he said, "but as the night goes on you are less and less conscious. So we all had big rings of dirty mud on our faces."