VANCOUVER -- An experienced free diver who explored the waters at Lynn Canyon last weekend has now returned a lost item that he found at the bottom of a dark pool.

Christopher Samson, a certified free diver, posted a catchy video online of his trip to Lynn Canyon. The narrated video includes footage of him and his young family as they made their way down the canyon trails, as well as underwater footage that he and a diving partner took during their exploration.

While he was filming his underwater dive, Samson’s flashlight happened upon something unusual.

“I went down and scooped it up and realized it was a top-model GoPro 8, the brand new one that was just released,” he said.

He tucked it inside his wetsuit, and when he got home, found a trove of footage. The camera contained video of a young man cliff-jumping at Lynn Valley.

Freediving – which requires holding your breath and is essentially scuba diving without an air tank – is a high-risk sport, and Samson, who practices every week, says he uses extensive timing protocols with his diving partner to keep one another safe.

“You look over each other like a hawk,” he said.

Samson included a few clips of the found cliff-jumping video footage at the end of his own video which he posted on his YouTube channel. He hoped that someone would recognize the man in the footage and he’d be able to return the gadget back to its original owner.

Cliff-jumping is extremely dangerous and people frequently get hurt attempting it at Lynn Valley. Others have died from it.

Officials with the District of North Vancouver Fire Department have previously told CTV News Vancouver that cliff jumping is “never safe" and that “there's lots of debris, there's lots of undercurrent, there's rocks that you can't see."

Samson, eager to find the owner, posted screenshots of the people in the cliff-jumping video on the “free” section of Facebook’s buy-and-sell listings.

“Within probably 20 minutes I had a few people message me,” Samson said. Eventually he heard from the owner.

“Very nice guy, tried to give me 100 bucks,” Samson said. He refused the money when the pair met up for the handover.

“I'm not trying to sound corny, but like, I felt way, way better just giving that guy's camera back than I would have taking the money or taking the camera,” he said. “I just want people to pay it forward.”

Samson, who works as an industrial safety instructor, is adamant that cliff-jumping and free diving are dangerous, and makes note of this in his video. The activities shouldn’t be attempted by anyone without proper training and lots of experience.

“I really do not encourage people to do what I do. Unless they're a certified, experienced, free diver,” he said.

“It's nothing to play around with. If you go unresponsive underwater, that's game over.”

Samson's video is embedded below.