Things you've found under water

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I once worked as a deck hand in Martha's Vineyard during a summer when I was in college. A women dropped her diamond pinky ring over board and asked me to go look for it. I grabbed my mask and snorkel and went in. The dock was next to a ferry landing so the bottom was silt. I was not optimistic and told her so. I went down 3 times, being careful not to churn up any of the silt. On the third attempt, I saw a small sliver of the band sticking up out of the silt and grabbed it. She was thrilled and gave me $60. It was the first gift her husband ever gave her. It was a good feeling.
 
I've found several bottles. One is from the early 1900's, from the prohibition period. moonshine time!
 
my very first dive I found a golf ball, then I found an old half-full bottle of perfume from like the 60's in long island sound. I still have both of them in my room.
 
1) Cash
2) A Russian military watch
3) Anchors
4) Lot's and Lot's of old cans
5) A iron boiler from a ship
6) An old knife

That last one was a keeper - I could have sworn it was some kind of old mariners knife, with a carved wooden handle and curved blade. This was like 15 years ago.

It was stolen from my dive bag when I tried to bring it home.
 
my brother found a pair of reading glasses
buddy of mine lost a pistol when his boat turnt over in the river
so we went looking for it
instead we found a stripped down motorcycle frame i think it was
a 1999 model bike at that this was back in 2000 when we found it
and a bunch of junk
tires, computer monitor, cement blocks
 
Lots of stuff, but a couple of my favorites are;

An anchor, 100 ft of chain, 300 ft of rope, and the pulpit of the boat that lost it. Must have been going pretty fast when it snagged the reef!

A half pint whisky bottle, circa 1954. It's the kind that had a wax seal, with a cork. The hooch is gone, but the cork is still inside the bottle.
 
During check out dives 10 plus years ago in a quarry, stumbled across a motocycle and an old volkwagen van (1960's version) each complete with its own skeleton decked out in appropriate gear. Obviously planted there for entertainment, but not realizing they were there made it a cool experience.
 
Over the years I've ben fortuneate to find all manner of nifty "stuff" - both recreationally & commercially, but nothing matched an experience in 1978 for sheer ****es n' giggles...


In the summer of 78' I was 18 & always on the lookout for some deepsea adventure. One Wednesday evening I was thumbing through the local paper & found an article that asked the provacative question: UFO in local "bottomless" pond? The author quoted a local resident who insisted he & many others had witnessed a strange, pulsating glow emanating from a local spring-fed pond, which was reputed to be "bottomless." He & his troops had been swimming in the pond the night before & had witnessed the unearthly throbbing specter begin it's eerie pulsations just as the last light of the day slipped away...

Now it just so happened that I knew of this chap - he was a resident of an 18th century farm house, owned by an eclectic old lady who operated the home as the "House of Creativity" - a house of refuge for most anyone in pursuit of spiritual & creative matters. Our intrepid UFO-sighter was the resident poet, muser of mysticism & was known to wax on at length about the weightier matters of life, death & the nature of the cosmos...

No less coincidentally, the creative old lady was also my girlfriend's Grandmother.

The next evening the paper ran an even larger article on the mysterious goings-on at the bottomless pond - this time with pictures! Our fearless poet - come UFO speculator was front & center, rambling on about the real possibility of alien activities in the area. I tossed the paper aside & commenced to packing my dive gear - my Sister's boyfriend & I were taking his Jeep North for the weekend to do some deep river diving, in pursuit of artifacts from the voyageur days in Central Ontario...

Next day, late afternoon, & we're just about ready to head North when the phone rings. Who could it be but sweet Gramma"DoDo" ( no kidding - thats what they called her! ), owner/operator of the "House of Creativity." She wanted to know if I could dive the pond that evening & identify the source of the ghostly spectral pulsations that had initiated, without fail, the two previous evenings. I explained the situation to my buddy Andy & he reluctantly agreed to join in the hunt. We grabbed our ectoplasmic discombobulators, donned our "Ghostbusters" dive apparel, & raced to the scene...

We arrived to find Gramma DoDo, the resident poet-laureate / UFO maven, & a host of other chanting, balding hippie-types milling about, mumbling incantations & beseeching the "pond entity" to glow-forth. A reporter / photographer from the local paper was also on hand to record the historic encounter. Andy & I geared up & entered the pea-green soupy waters to begin our search. The best direction we could ascertain from the poet was that "it" was "out there" somewhere - indicated by a broad, majestic sweep of the arm. We decended at twilight, hoping the apparition would begin it's nightly light show, so that we might zero in on it's beacon. Within minutes we had located "bottom" in this "bottomless" pond as being 33', & the consistency of diaretic loon-poo. Visibility was near zero, & after a few sweeps, we surfaced to ask for more specific direction...

Gramma DoDo, in a flowing komono that did little to hide her ample girth, ascended a small promontory of rock near the edge of the pond, raised her arm slowly, and, like some ancient Tibetan mystic, paused for effect, then slowly lowered her arm, pointed, & in a voice from deep in the grave intoned: " It is there..."

We quickly decended, & out of the gloom it appeared...we froze in abject....hilarity! There before us was the mystery, the inter-galactic visitor - an amber yellow construction warning sign! One of those nifty pedastal warning lights with a photo-sensitive light cell, designed to activate the warning beacon at the approach of dusk...

I grabbed the sign, surfaced, & held the alien intruder aloft for all to see. There was a collective gasp form the anxious on-lookers, then a clot of nervous laughter began as folks realized how silly they'd been to believe we'd been invaded. I looked over to the poet, who was frantically, pleadingly, waving his arms in a downward motion. Ignoring his gyrations, Andy & I triumphantly emerged from the murk, bearing our prize...

As Andy & I posed with our captive alien for a few pictures, the poet was seen to be racing Westward on his borrowed bicycle, never to be quoted again. Gramma DoDo
wanted to keep "E.T." as a reminder to all that "life is not always as it appears" or some other such weighty life-lesson...

As for Andy & me - well, our work was done there, it was time to pack up & head for the next adventure, somewhere, just over that horizon...

D.S.D.
 
LOL Love it Dan! The perfect story with my morning coffee this sunny Saturday.

Thanks..and be sure to write about your next close encounter of the 3rd kind, again soon. :winky:
 
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