I find peoples' lost jewelry on beaches for a living. I have a 90% success rate, and most searches take me under 2 hours.

• Michael Oliver would hunt for lost metal as a hobby while working as a forklift driver.
• But when he began finding a lot more than metal, he realized he could make a living doing it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Michael Oliver, who uses metal-detecting equipment to retrieve lost items in Sydney, Australia. It has been edited for length and clarity.

For my tenth birthday, I received a metal detector, and a new hobby was born. I could never have envisaged that two decades later, it'd be my full-time job.

Previously, I was a forklift driver. I had back injuries and was sick of working for a place that didn't seem to care about employees or their efforts. I'd do metal detecting in my spare time to cheer myself up.

When the volume of jewelry I was finding started piling up, I realized I could make my passion my profession

I've been doing it professionally for seven years now. I called my business Lost Jewelry Recovery rather than naming it as a metal-detecting service, because jewelry is the main thing clients call me to recover.

I have a lot of equipment — not just the metal-detecting equipment for land, but scuba gear and underwater detectors, too.

That's because the searches aren't just on the sand — they can be out at sea, too. I could be getting wet searching in shallow water or literally doing a dive in the deeper ocean — whatever it takes to recover the client's lost treasure.

Where I start searching depends on where the client last remembers having the item, the tides, and the weather.

The equipment tells me exactly where to dig and how far down

Sometimes I find lost jewelry in five minutes or less. Other times, it might take two hours. It all depends on weather conditions, tides, and if the owner felt the item slip off them — giving me an estimated radius of where the item may be. Every Sydney lifeguard has my number.

A call out costs 150 Australian dollars for a two-hour search. I have a success rate of about 90%.

There are heaps of lost rings: engagement rings, wedding rings, family heirlooms, 21 st-birthday rings, grandma's ring — the lot. All very sentimental, and sometimes also very high monetary value. One guy said his wedding ring cost AU$50,000, or about $35,000.

He lost it on an ocean swim. He called me in secret, hoping I'd find it before his wife noticed. I did — within an hour. I recently found the ring a mum had gifted her daughter before she died.

I get repeat visitors, too. One man called me out twice to find his lost wedding ring.

One widow lost her late husband's wedding ring while paddleboarding. They were married for 25 years, and since his death 19 years ago, she had never taken off his wedding band, inscribed with the word "always." That one made for a very tearful reunion.

Reunions are often emotional

Sometimes curious beachgoers who've watched the nail-biting search burst into spontaneous applause when I find the lost item. Other times, the owner just bursts into tears. I get a lot of relieved hugs.

It's not just rings: I've recovered a gold diamond Rolex watch whose owner said it was worth AU$100,000. I remember one woman lost an expensive bangle that'd been a gift, which featured a very rare and precious stone. After the waves bashed us around and took us out a few times, I heard those magic beeps.

She described it as a miracle, and her partner got so excited that he grabbed me and hugged me so tightly that he immediately broke the bracelet — it snapped clean in half.

There are the far more unusual items that aren't jewelry

I was once called to aid a man who wore his father's ashes around his neck in a crucifix, but had lost it after getting into a fight at a house party.

At the moment, we're in the height of Sydney's summer, and everyone's out on the beaches, so I'm busier than ever — up to six calls a day, mainly to various busy beaches.

We're so busy, I take my mum out on recovery missions with me. She loves metal detecting, too. She'll be on her knees for hours, determined to find the lost item. She works at a hospital 18 hours a day, then is on the beach at 4 a.m. That's how committed we are — and how busy we get.

That's summer, though. Winter's a different story. A whole month can pass without a single call. I love metal detecting so much that I'll hunt just as a hobby during the downtime and make videos of the interesting things I find.

Everything is locked up, but not at my property, because too many people know where I live now. There are thousands of items of unclaimed jewelry there. I've never sold any of it. I'm very proud of that. It's not my jewelry — it's theirs.

Luckily, I found a related side hustle — posting videos of my recovery missions and emotional reunion on my YouTube channel. It now has 309,000 subscribers, and I make money from the ads. On a rainy day, I'll use the time to edit videos, which is time-consuming, but it helps pay the bills.

The best part of my job is the adrenaline rush I get when an owner asserts, "You'll never find it." They think it has already washed away to New Zealand, but that's never the case. I have hundreds of videos proving over and again that their jewelry is retrievable, usually to their great surprise.

I'm helping others find their lost treasures. That's why I get up in the morning: those reunions. I live for them.