Reporting and photography by Michael M. Phillips
TROU D'EAU DOUCE, Mauritius -- Resort managers on this island paradise keep a series of phone numbers handy in case of emergency. The police, ambulance, fire department, cyclone-warning system and, of course, Zoël Manguillier, the guy to call when the groom drops his wedding ring in the Indian Ocean.
Sure, there are a few amateurs with metal detectors willing to give it a crack when a destination wedding takes a disastrous turn. But the best bet on Mauritius is Manguillier, whose record of against-all-odds ring recoveries, in sand or underwater, is unmatched.
The 61-year-old found one newlywed's ring after searching an area of water the size of a football field, and delivered it to him at the airport minutes before his flight home. He found a woman's treasured necklace -- with three treasured rings strung on it -- two days after she lost it while swimming.
There was the Frenchman who lost his wedding ring during a swim at the Trou aux Biches Beachcomber Golf Resort & Spa; Manguillier combed up the ring in an hour. The Frenchman lost it again the following day. Manguillier found it again.
He once dredged up 17 rings in a single day by sweeping the ocean bottom in a spot where tourists, well into their tequila sunrises, routinely launch themselves off catamarans, their fingers slick with sunscreen.
Manguillier estimates he's found 1,000 rings during more than 30 years of jewelry hunting. Sometimes he's just out there for fun, but often he's wielding his submersible Excalibur II metal detector to salvage someone's destination wedding.
"He was like a knight in shining armor," says Megan Snyders, 33, a British children's book illustrator who watched Manguillier search for her friend Olivia Tysoe's engagement ring.
Snyders and Tysoe, 33, a London-based editor of an endocrinology journal, visited Mauritius last October for another friend's wedding at the Maritim Resort & Spa on Turtle Bay. They had just finished the final brunch when Tysoe dropped her gold ring on the beach while brushing sand off her feet.
It landed near her lounger and disappeared from sight.
The Maritim is accustomed to such crises. During its wedding heyday in the early 2000s, the resort hosted 360 a year, sometimes three a day, according to Antje Tourneur, guest experience director. The destination weddings have tapered off since Covid, but the hotel is seeing a spate of destination proposals and destination vow renewals.
Hotel staff cordoned off Tysoe's lounger, running yellow-and-black police tape from thatched beach umbrella to thatched beach umbrella. They planted red Do Not Disturb flags -- usually on hand to signal that a sunbather wants to nap, not drink.
Tysoe was bereft. Friends medicated her with a cocktail while they waited for Manguillier, who had been summoned from the far side of the island.
Once he arrived, it took him less than a minute to find the ring. "The most tense 20 seconds of my life," Tysoe recalls.
Manguillier got into the tourism business in 1978, at first ferrying souvenir dealers to Île aux Cerfs, a small island near his home in Trou d'Eau Douce. Later, he opened a T-shirt stand.
In the early 1990s, he got into parasailing, strapping tourists into parachutes and towing them behind a speed boat. When they dropped jewelry, he'd put on a mask and tank.
Manguillier found his niche in the island economy in 1993 when a French friend brought him a Fisher metal detector, which operates both on land and in the water. It now stands next to his four Excalibur IIs, lovingly lined up like soldiers on his living-room sofa. There's usually one in the car trunk because you never know.
His father was a fisherman by trade, and they used to spend nights out on the water. Manguillier prefers to do his metal detecting after sunset, too. The beaches are empty, and he can concentrate on the beeping in his bulbous yellow headphones, which grows louder as the coil gets closer to metal.
It was well after dark when Manguillier found Anthony Empson's wedding ring off Île aux Cerfs.
Empson, a 56-year-old British driving instructor, and Sharon Wilkinson, 60, had their dream wedding on the beach. They were winding up the holiday when his platinum ring slipped off his finger.
The boat crew searched with scuba gear, then called in Manguillier. "There's no guarantee that he'll find it. But if anyone can, he's the guy," Empson remembers the guide saying.
Late that night the guide sent a text: "Do you believe in miracle?"
Empson says he was happy to pay the equivalent of $400 for the service. (Manguillier charges according to the length of the search, but only asks for gas money if he fails to find the ring.)
With just five hours left on his honeymoon at the Radisson Blu resort in Poste Lafayette, South African finance executive Leonard Beukman, 29, decided to squeeze in a paddleboard session.
His bride, 29-year-old Luzaan Beukman, suggested he leave his white-gold band -- "Forever & Always" engraved inside -- in the hotel room. Instead, it fell off his hand somewhere in a sprawling expanse of turquoise-blue water.
"To lose your ring after seven days of being married is quite a shock," says Beukman, who manfully admits he deserved the "I told you so" he received from his wife.
The hotel called in Manguillier, who found the ring after a two-hour search in chest-deep water. By that time, the Beukmans were already at the airport.
Manguillier raced to passenger drop-off and delivered the ring to Leonard, who had secured a jump-the-line indulgence from sympathetic airport security agents. The couple made their flight by minutes.
"We had a wonderful honeymoon," says Beukman. "I enjoy adrenaline."
It's much the same for Manguillier. He keeps plastic butter containers stuffed with rings found while he's out searching for fun. He rarely sells them, or even looks at them.
"I could spend all night in the water searching," he says, sweeping his arm back and forth, an imagined metal detector in his hand.
It isn't about the grail. It's about the quest.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at Michael.Phillips@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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