October 03:  While we were having fun doing an Ecology dive Sunday, someone had lost a purse and phone off a boat in a local marina. Monday morning I discovered an email asking  about the availability of a diver to see if the  lost items could be found. Being retired does have the advantage of not being tied up on a Monday afternoon instead of being at some  job “working”.   After talking with the lady who lost the purse & phone I was assured of its exact position when dropped and told that there was a minimal effort of poking around on the bottom with a LONG pole and fish net attached trying to recover it.

For anyone who recovers objects underwater, we are used to being told the X on the water is where an object was lost.  And through experience I have noted that anytime the owner has used a  long pole and or net in a recovery effort, they often succeed in burying the item, or picking  it up just enough for the current to catch it and move it to a totally unrelated  place to where it was dropped.

In this case the depth was 15 feet ,  two feet of visibility, one large piling on the bottom under the boat,  old tree parts and typical odds and ends.  The purse was located nudged against one of the branches and within 3 feet of where it was  dropped.  Dried everything out, dewatered the phone and left it in a bag of rice for good measure.  The owner was very pleased to get everything back, and the I-phone, it still worked.