Found and lost.
At Homestead crater in Utah just after the new year my wife and I were using our dive lights to take a look at the "stuff" on the bottom of the crater. There was a group there of four divers obviously looking for something on the bottom. A woman diver came up to my wife and started gesturing that she wanted my wife to shine her light in a different spot. My wife played along for while and then finally loaned the woman the light so that she could look for whatever it was she wanted.
The woman looked for a very short while and then started to surface, with my wife's light. My wife and I were a little surprised at this but did not see any reason to end our dive. We, or at least I, figured that the borrowed light would be at the surface when we finished.
Before the dive was done I saw a lost fin strap on the bottom at the edge of the crater. I retrieved that and clipped it off to my BC, figuring that this must be what the woman was looking for. Turns out this was right.
We surfaced and my wife went looking for her light. None of the group we saw on the bottom were still in the crater. No light was left anywhere. We checked with the attendant on duty there, he knew nothing of a lost fin strap or a dive light. But did give my wife a phone number of the DM (or maybe instructor) who was a part of that group. We eventually were able to let the right person know the fin strap was located and left with the crater attendant.
We finally got a story about what happened to the dive light, sort of. Here is her story. As soon as the woman started using my wife's borrowed dive light she was approached by a man who signaled for her to surface. They both surfaced and the man started chastising the woman about using the dive light, claiming that it was not allowed in the crater (we checked with the people there -- and there is no such rule) and that she was to give him the light. For some reason she did so.
The woman who borrowed the light and the man who confiscated it were both gone when we surfaced. We were never able to locate the man nor the light.
So the final score was one found the lost fin strap which we turned in to the attendant and notified the owner and one lost dive light. And an odd story.
Carl Jess
so I dug up my old one...
