When a gaming YouTuber found a gun while scuba diving, he decided to completely change his type of videos. Now he has 8.7 million subscribers.
- There is an entire community on YouTube of "underwater treasure hunters" who earn revenue by filming themselves searching waterways for "lost treasure."
- Jake Koehler, who goes by DALLMYD online, is a successful underwater treasure hunter who has gained 8.7 million subscribers on YouTube.
- But his videos used to be focused on gaming.
- In late 2016, he uploaded a GoPro video to his gaming channel on YouTube, in which he found a gun buried underwater while scuba diving.
- This video gained traction online and led him to change the overall content of his channel to focus on underwater treasure hunting.
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Up until Jake Koehler found a gun while scuba diving in his hometown, he was a gaming YouTuber.
For five years, his YouTube channel DALLMYD was all about video games. But Koehler said that quickly changed after he uploaded the video titled, "Found a possible murder weapon underwater in a river (Police called)," which went viral overnight in late 2016.
At the time of writing, the video has 20.9 million views.
Koehler told Business Insider that in response to this success, he decided to shift the direction of his channel to focus on underwater treasure hunting.
"I think that's what ultimately changed my life and allowed me to take this career," he said. "It was something new that no one really saw before, and there was something genuine and intriguing about handing stuff back."
Since finding that first weapon, Koehler said collectively, he's found around 20 guns, and sometimes the police will update him on whether the weapon is linked back to a crime.
"Some of these things seem a little far-fetched," he said. "But these are guns that are truly throw into the river."
Koehler has worked with the police many times, he said, and reports every gun he finds. The strangest thing he's found was a "box of human remains."
At the time of discovery, Koehler didn't realize the box he found was filled with ashes, but knew there was something suspicious about it, he said. After working with the police, he ultimately decided to rebury the box.
"I opened it up, pulled the bag out and it had a name on it," he said. "I was like, 'oh my gosh,' in the movies you're supposed to sprinkle the ashes. We called the police and they told me to go ahead and throw it back into the water. I put a rock ontop of it, so that no one would find it or float away."
By focusing on treasure hunting videos, Koehler has turned his passion of filming videos for YouTube into a lucrative business, hiring his mom and friends to help him run it, he said.
"I tried my best to keep the hype up, because if you let it go, and let it fall through your finger tips, it can all be gone forever," he said. "You can never be promised what things you will find, just try and put your heart into it and maybe you'll get lucky."