Secunda’s Ian Haggerty enjoys his next adventure
Photographer finds a copy of the Quran inside the ocean in Mauritius.
Local photographer Ian Haggerty, who has been living in Mauritius for the past three months, recently found a Quran at the bottom of the ocean and his video of it went viral on social media.
He initially uploaded the video on his TikTok account, but since then millions of people shared it. It has got more than 10 million views already on social media.
“It is very popular, especially in the Muslim countries,” said Haggerty.
“I thought it was a magazine. I paged to the front to see if there was a cover, but there was nothing, so I left it open in the same way I found it.”
When Haggerty went back a week later to the same spot where he found the Quran, it was gone.
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He worked as a safety, health and environment practitioner on a contract basis at Sasol in Secunda before deciding to explore Mauritius and see if he wants to move there permanently.
“I came here to help manage a scuba diving school with the possibility of taking it over and living here in the long term,” said Haggerty.
He completed his scuba diving open water course in 1999 in Scotland but has not been diving often.
He did a few dives at the Aliwal Shoal, Sodwana, and in Mauritius, but these days he is diving every day, sometimes twice a day.
“Mauritius is a beautiful country and I love diving here,” said Haggerty.
His video of the Quran was not the only one that went viral on social media. Haggerty also took a video of an octopus grabbing his hand and another of breaking an egg under the water.
“People ask me why I took so long to break the egg, but it was an experiment to see if the egg could take the pressure under water. When I opened the egg too fast, it broke, but when I opened it slower, it did not break.”
A fourth video of Haggerty that went viral was of a moray eel attacking an octopus.
Haggerty has been an avid photographer for many years. His sense of adventure took him to England, where he worked at a medieval jousting tourney as a ‘knight’ in earlier years and to the Wild Coast race on a horse in 2018.
This race spans 350km and Haggerty went as a photographer. The Mongol Derby in Mongolia in Far East Asia selected him as an official photographer for the race in 2019.
Haggerty described this equestrian endurance race as an incredible adventure for both the crew and the horse riders.
