We can find anything

Visibility:

In almost every body of freshwater the visibility is poor. In Lake Monroe for example it is not uncommon to have 12 inches of visibilty at the surface, dropping to 6 inches at 2 feet under the surface and is often 0 by ten feet. Even on a good day where there are feet of visibilty all the way to the bottom, our search activity disturbs the bottom and drops visibility to zero.

This means we cannot search with our eyes.

Search Area:

For items like a wallet or phone we need to search by hand. This means we need to put our hands on every patch of ground in the search area to feel that the item is not there. Using these methods we can search about a 20ft radius in an hour.

For items person sized and up we can use tools like sonar which allow us to "see" through the murky water at a low resolution. We can see size and rough shape of objects. When we see things of the right size we send divers to check. Using these techniques we can thoroughly search about a quarter mile in an hour.

It is important to have a good idea of where you want us to search. We can search "over there somewhere" but it takes a long time which makes the cost to our customers, that's you high.

The smaller the object the longer it takes to search an area.

Size:

For items like a wallet or phone our divers can simply bring it up with them as part of their normal ascent. It is not uncommon for our divers to bring up a deck chair although they often require assistance to remove it from the water. It turns out that size of objects is most often not the determining factor, weight is.

For recovery size is a minor factor.

Weight:

The lighter an item is the easier it is to recover.

Weight is complicated underwater due to buoyancy. A diver can often bring a object to the surface with 10 pounds of force, then upon reaching the surface removing the item can take upwards of 300 pounds of force. We try to keep the force each diver is exerting on an object to bring it to the surface under 10 pounds. If we need more force to get items to the surface we use special equipment referred to as lift bags. If it's heavy when it's out of the water we have tools to help there too. See our Boat Raisings for more information on heavy weight recovery. When properly informed heavy items can be retrieved on similar timescales to light ones. The real time sink comes when we have to get out of the water and go pickup equipment when the reality did not match our information.