As this site is called “On the Hunt for Treasure” today was one of those special days where I actually got to go out looking for some. Jim, the manager of Wolfs Marine Dive Shop in Benton Harbor, had gotten a call looking for some one to recover a lost ring. Since Jim was not wanting to dive this day he gave me a call to see if I was interested. Yep! I was.
So on Tuesday we drove up to South Haven Mi to see how accurate the rings owner was in placing an X in the river to mark the splash site. The river waters feeding Lake Michigan have been fast and high this summer and the Black river flowing thru South Haven was no exception. In fact the Black River had a very notable seiche this year which was a temporary disturbance in the water level caused by changes in atmospheric pressure. It actually pushed up the already high water lever to flood the docks.
The river takes its name from the dark brown color of its water, which is caused by suspended sediments and organic materials picked up along its course. The river supports a variety of wildlife including trout, snapping turtles, leeches, and many other varieties of flora and fauna. What this sediments & organic material means to a diver is the visibility is going to be poor to non-existent. I was not disappointed!
If you have ever lost something in the water from swimming or from a dock, pier, or boat its often very hard to really say exactly where the splash really was so you make a mental X on the water. From vast experience that X on moving water is just that, a moving target.
So the rings owner showed me where he was on the boat, how the ring was lost, and where he believes it went splash. So, I handed him a penny and said to throw it in at the splash area. He did so and noted that the penny splash was pretty close to the splash point. So I then took the remaining 9 pennies from my pocket and threw them in at this new splash point. Jim helped me suit up and enter the water from shore then positioned a drop weight and line from the back boat platform establishing a defined reference point.
Swam up to Jim on the platform, checked buoyancy and then Jim handed me my metal detector. Once on the bottom I started my search. Locating my first penny I knew I was in the proper area. Then I found three more pennies and then BINGO, the ring.
As you can see in the photo he was VERY pleased with the outcome and was darn lucky. The area where the ring was in was clear of junk and was mostly silty mud. A couple feet in any other direction the bottom turned to a junk yard of every thing especially rusty metal. If it had been in that area finding that ring would have been almost impossible to find, if found at all. The owner was happy and I was happy. A good ending for us all.
