An angler who found a camera in a Colorado river was able to retrieve the photographs from the device and discovered it had been submerged for 13 years.

Spencer Greiner was out fishing in the Animas River when he spotted a camera in shallow water.

Greiner admitted the camera had seen better days and was planning to throw it away, but curiosity got the better of him, and he had to see what was on it.

Greiner opened the memory card compartment and a lot of water poured out.

“I was like, this is probably not going to work at all,'” Greiner said. “But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately, and I was like, ‘Oh cool, let’s see what sort of treasures we’re going to find on this memory card.'”

The card was loaded with photos of a hen party, a wedding and a tubing trip.

Greiner posted some of the photos on a local community Facebook group, where members started recognising themselves in the pictures.

It turns out Carol Amayi dropped the camera in 2010 whilst she was on a tubing trip.

Greiner and Amayi realised the camera must have travelled approximately 1.2 miles down the river whilst being underwater for 13 years.

“Hats off to OM System and their Olympus Stylus 790W,” said Amayi in a Facebook post. “The camera was unusable, but it was tough enough to keep the SD card intact.”