Forget Mars. Swim deep enough, and you are on a different planet. Deep below, there are things older than dinosaurs and forests from ancient lands.

While that makes for a great view, divers also face life-threatening situations like toxic streams and whales in a manhandling mood. Then there are the heroes who risk themselves by saving everything from the world’s biggest fish to one of its most venomous.

10 An Adorable Carnivorous Blob

When diver Emeric Benhalassa recently visited a diving site near Bali, he filmed a cute blob. The creature looked alien, but scientists have known about them for a while. Even their name is adorable—the nudibranch.

These hand-sized creatures are sea slugs. Ranging in colors from green to yellow-brown, they have long bodies with leglike appendages and balloons for heads. This particular species, Melibe viridis, was a common type of nudibranch. What made the footage special was that it captured the creature’s rarely seen feeding behavior.

The nudibranch has a unique technique to compensate for its weak eyesight. It uses its head like a net, throwing it widely over the seafloor. Rows of sensors run along the edge. When they detect a small crab or snail, the gelatinous head snaps shut and traps the prey.^[1]

9 Human-Sized Jellyfish

Biologist Lizzie Daly went swimming off the coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom. Luckily for those who love enormous blobs of jelly, Dan Abbott went along. The underwater cinematographer filmed her encounter with a rare creature.

While diving near the southwestern tip of England, the pair noticed a giant jellyfish emerge from the dark water. It was a barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo), a rare species that is also known as the dustbin-lid jellyfish.

That is regrettably what its “head” looks like. The large dome trails eight thick arms and tentacles capable of stinging. As the United Kingdom’s biggest jellies, the human-sized creatures are mostly known from specimens that beach themselves. For divers to encounter a living barrel jellyfish just pulsing its way through the ocean is rare.^[2]

8 A Confused Remora

Two divers explored a coral reef off the coast of Egypt when one noticed that they had gained a companion. It was a remora (aka a suckerfish). These critters have an organ like a suction cup on their heads, which they use to attach themselves to larger hosts. Remoras then feast on the crumbs of whatever the host kills in a messy fashion.

For this reason, they prefer to latch onto sharks. This particular remora was trying to grasp one of the divers. The incident was caught on film and released in 2017. It showed the fish swimming around the man, pecking at the diving suit and doggedly following the diver when he continued to explore the reef.

Ranging from 0.3 to 0.9 meters (1–3 ft) long, remoras seem to have a penchant for confusing divers for sharks. Enric Sala, a marine biologist, has seen several cases. While diving near the Southern Line Islands in 2009, he was pursued by a remora himself.^[3]

7 Underwater Forest

Divers have found ancient tree stumps underwater before. However, nothing came close to the discovery of a British diver who explored the sea off the coast of Norfolk.

In 2015, Dawn Watson was pushed off course by rough water and ended up in a place where the seafloor was littered with large oak trees. It turned out to be a 10,000-year-old forest.

The age factor was not the only special thing about the discovery. The prehistoric forest covered the thousands of acres that once linked continental Europe with Great Britain. This landmass was called Doggerland, and artifacts brought up by fishermen suggest that it was populated by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

Around 10,000 years ago, the forest was at its peak performance, providing ample hunting opportunities for people and animals alike. These days, the oak trees entertain a different kind of client. Several species of marine life now inhabit the forest as a reef.^[4]

6 A Porcupinefish Rescue

Porcupinefish are often confused for pufferfish. It is not hard to see why. Just like pufferfish, porcupinefish balloon to comical proportions to avoid being swallowed by a predator. They also have long spikes all over their bodies and the deadly toxin tetrodotoxin in certain organs. Around 1,200 times more lethal than cyanide, the poison also laces their skin.

For obvious reasons, few would handle a live porcupinefish barehanded. In recent years, YouTuber Kye Bolen uploaded a video showing a diver doing just that. The man encountered a porcupinefish with a large hook in its mouth.

He took hold of the fish, careful not to spook it. The creature stayed remarkably calm and did not inflate. That would have been unfortunate as the spikes would have risen and endangered the diver.

The man gently wiggled the hook. But near the end, it took a few rough tugs—and the porcupinefish puffed up. Undeterred, the diver held the fish by the head to avoid the spikes and managed to remove the hook.^[5]

5 A Glowing Nest

In 2017, a scuba diver found something weird near the coast of Australia. It looked like some kind of creature. The thing was tube-shaped, translucent, and huge. Best of all, it glowed.

The fringe theorists quickly speculated about mystery beasts, but biologists begged to differ. The tube was not a creature but the nest of a squid lined with strings of eggs. The latter were pink with a pearl-like appearance.

Identifying the parent of a squid clutch is surprisingly hard. Nothing is definite, but scientists believe that the tube was produced by the mysterious diamond squid (Thysanoteuthis rhombus).

These large kite-shaped creatures live with their mates for their entire lives, which is roughly a year. The glow of the tube comes directly from the eggs. Nobody knows how they shimmer, although a clue was found in diamond squid larvae. A previous study hatched diamond eggs and found that the babies had pigment cells for both red and yellow.^[6]

4 Entangled Whale Shark

In 2018, Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources was alerted by scuba divers that a whale shark was in trouble. This was no light matter. Not only are whale sharks the largest fish on the planet, but the gentle beasts are also endangered. The divers reported that the animal was entangled in a rope, but they failed to help it.

Later that year, a free-diving Hawaiian family enjoyed the sea near the island of Lanai. Despite years of free-diving, they had never seen a whale shark and were delighted when they found a young female some distance below.

It did not take long for them to realize that the shark had serious injuries. A heavy rope had cut deeply into a pectoral fin and rubbed scars into her back.

To free the shark, the father performed a series of two-minute dives to a depth of up to 18 meters (60 ft). The animal’s calmness was remarkable. Normally, whale sharks swim away when touched, but she allowed the man to saw at the rope for over half an hour until she was free.^[7]

3 Whale Roughing Up A Diver

Humpback whales are often depicted as gentle giants. Marine biologist Nan Hauser, who had 28 years of experience diving with whales, could not really disagree—until 2018.

While diving with her team off the Cook Islands, an enormous humpback approached Hauser. The 22,700-kilogram (50,000 lb) mammal got a little rough. It seemed to insist on putting Hauser on its head or tucked away under a giant pectoral fin.

For more than 10 minutes, the biologist kept calm. The whale’s movements were not brutal, but their size difference made it a potentially deadly encounter. At one point, it even lifted her out of the water.

Back on the boat, Hauser realized that the situation was not as simple as running into a mean-tempered whale. On the other side of the humpback lurked a 4.6-meter-long (15 ft) tiger shark. There was also a second humpback swatting the water near the predator.

Humpbacks have been recorded saving seals and the calves of other whale species from orcas. If this was a similar behavior, it would be the first known case where the giants protected a human from danger.^[8]

2 A Creature Older Than The Dinosaurs

There exists a remarkable creature deep in the sea. The bluntnose sixgill is a large shark that trawled the ocean before most dinosaurs existed. The 200-million-year-old species likely survived Earth’s biggest extinction event, the Permian-Triassic die-off, from which only 4 percent of all sea life escaped.

It saw the evolution and extinction of the famous monster shark megalodon. The sixgill is still here. Naturally, researchers would love to study this ancient creature, but their deep habitat is a challenge.

In 2019, scientists dared the depths with a submersible. They hit the jackpot in the Bahamas. When the submersible reached 990 meters (3,250 ft), a massive sixgill approached. The female, measuring 4.9 meters (16 ft) long, seemed curious about the divers. She batted her huge blue eyes at the researchers and gently nosed the vessel.

However, her power exploded when she tore into the bait offered outside the submersible and rattled everyone inside. She was too close to tag. But later that night, the scientists found a male sixgill and he became the first animal shot with a tracker tag from a submarine.^[9]

1 River Wrapped In Poison

The Cenote Angelita is a sinkhole in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. From above, it looks like a normal freshwater pool. However, divers who descend about 30 meters (100 ft) meet with an incredible sight—an underwater river. An eerie mist hangs around it, wrapping the river in a swathe at least 3 meters (10 ft) thick.

Some divers who dare to go into the mist often panic. The cloud is pure hydrogen sulfide and makes for an extremely disorienting swim. The gas is fatal to inhale. This is not the most comforting substance to feel lost in.

The river is actually something called the halocline. Cenotes have both seawater and fresh water. The river forms when they meet and cannot fully mix due to density differences.

The parts that do merge formed the halocline river, a brackish stream underneath fresh water but above salt water. As the river is thick enough to prevent forest litter from sinking past it, the decomposition produces the hydrogen sulfide that stays with the stream.^[10]

Underwater diving isn’t just a recreational activity, it’s an important trade with many industrial applications. Commercial divers are fearless professionals who work in dangerous environments. Most divers specialize in one type of underwater work, with the big bucks going to those who aren’t afraid to take on significant health and safety risks. Here’s a list of some of the most fascinating (and often disgusting) jobs that commercial divers perform.

10 Underwater Welding

The idea of welding metals together underwater seems almost impossible, but it’s one of the more useful trades a commercial diver can pick up. The technique for joining metals together underwater dates to the 1930s and is most often used to repair submerged structures like bridges, ships, and pipelines.

There are two basic types of underwater welding: dry and wet. Dry welding, the more common version, requires a hyperbaric chamber which creates a seal around the welding area. Water is pumped out of the chamber by hoses, then replaced with a gaseous mixture including helium and oxygen. Offshore jobs like oil rigs often employ “habitat welding,” where the gas-filled chamber is large enough to fit one or more divers. Helium and oxygen are pumped in while toxic welding gases are pumped out to create a dry, breathable workspace.

Wet welding is considered much riskier because salt water is a very effective conductor of electricity. Wet welders often use a technique called shielded metal arc welding, which protects them from being electrocuted by generating a layer of gaseous bubbles around the welding area. Even with proper safety procedures, both wet and dry welders face hazards like electrocution, explosions, and drowning. Not a job for the faint of lung.

9 Sewer Diving

Sewer systems for major cities have a lot of moving parts. Hundreds of pipes and pumps are required to flush away the daily waste of humanity, and you better believe they get clogged up with all manner of unmentionables. That’s when you call the sewer diver. Julio Cu Camara has been plumbing the depths of Mexico City’s sewers for almost four decades to maintain the elaborate drainage system that keeps the city clean. Working in a hermetically sealed three-centimeter-thick dive suit, Cu takes weekly plunges into the black water to perform routine maintenance of motor parts.

Julio can repair pumps in a day that would take two weeks to fix otherwise. Oh, and did we mention he does it completely blind? “Black water” isn’t just an expression. The sewers of Mexico City are so full of human and chemical waste that no light has been able to illuminate the foul depths. Cu is getting up in years, so he’s been training a replacement to take over his important job when he retires. Along with the unimaginable stench, the next sewer diver of Mexico City will have to get used to finding the occasional dead horse or pig floating in the sewers without wondering “who flushed that?”

8 Aqueduct Repair

New York City’s water supply comes from reservoirs in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, which connect to the metropolis by massive tunnels like the 85-mile Delaware Aqueduct. The city noticed leaks in the aqueduct in the late 1980s and eventually hired a Seattle diving firm to investigate. In February of 2008, a team of divers was dispatched to the bowels of the aqueduct, where they lived for two weeks in a sealed and pressurized chamber complete with sleeping quarters, toilets, and even a Nerf basketball hoop. The chamber itself was had to be pressurized with 97% helium and 3% oxygen so the divers could easily transition into the high-pressure underwater shaft without risking decompression sickness (a.k.a. “the bends”).

Divers working 24-hour shifts were lowered 700 feet into the shaft to inspect the structure and take measurements for repair equipment. Later that year, the city sent divers into the aqueduct again for nearly a month to fix the valves at the bottom of the shaft. The divers who lived in the saturated chambers had to be gradually weaned off helium over the course of a week to reacclimate them to surface air. Diver Chris Hackworthy said one of the biggest challenges was communicating in the helium environment, which made everyone sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Helium also dulls tastebuds, so the crew ate a lot of Tabasco and jalapeños during their underground deployment. Better hope that bathroom had some fans in it, since they probably didn’t pack any Febreze.

7 Nuclear Diving

Nuclear power plants need a lot of water to keep running, both to generate electricity and to manage hazardous waste. When their water infrastructure needs maintenance, plant managers turn to nuclear divers. A lot of what divers do for nuclear plants is “mudwork,” low-risk tasks like cleaning intake pipes in the lakes that supply the plant’s water. These pipes can get clogged with debris from the lake, including schools of fish who mistake the plant’s heat for warm spawning water. Cleaning fish guts out of giant pipes might be gross, but it doesn’t put divers at risk of radiation exposure. However, they do closely monitor their radiation doses when performing riskier tasks like repairing the underwater carts that move spent fuel rods from reactors to the pools where they are stored.

During longer dives in high-radiation environments, divers sometimes find their dosimeter creeping up beyond the acceptable maximum. When this happens, the plant managers must decide whether they’re going to send someone else in or grant an extension allowing the diver to exceed the legal exposure limit. As most nuclear divers will tell you, the big worry isn’t one-time exposures but small doses over long periods, which can have unpredictable effects on human health. As one spouse of a diver said in a Popular Science article: “Who wants a glowing husband?”

6 Discovering Lost Civilizations

No one has yet located the fabled city of Atlantis, but underwater divers have turned up some incredible archaeological finds. Most people would think of shipwrecks as the main target of underwater archaeology, but that’s just one of many types of sites excavated by divers. Coastlines are always changing, and some areas that were once dry thousands of years ago are now underwater. These submerged sites include Neolithic villages like Atlit-Yam in Israel and more recent seaside settlements like the colonial Jamaican town of Port Royal. In 2020, a group of archaeologists surveyed the area off the coast of Murujuga in northwestern Australia and found 269 stone artifacts with the help of scuba divers. Radiocarbon dating showed that these specimens were between 7,000 and 8,500 years old. Most appeared to be tools for scraping and cutting, though one is believed to be a grindstone used to crush seeds into bread flour. This site was the first one over 5,000 years old to be discovered in the tropics, proving that stone tools can survive on warmer seafloors despite the threats of algae and natural disasters. Underwater archaeology projects show us that bits of the past can be found in every nook and cranny of our planet.

5 Finding Drugs

People hide drugs in a lot of crazy places, but most don’t have the gumption to keep their stash in the ocean. In 2020, a group of volunteer divers surveying an artificial reef off Florida’s Treasure Coast came across a square package floating in the water. When they opened it, they found a kilogram of uncut cocaine, which they turned over to the Coast Guard. This isn’t the first time someone has found drugs off the Treasure Coast. In fact, locals have a nickname for the floating packages: “square groupers.” They are believed to be the product of drug dealers tossing their wares into the ocean when they’re in danger of being caught. An even larger underwater cache of coke was found by the Greek coast guard in April of 2021. Following a DEA tip, coast guard divers found 46.7 kilograms (about 103 pounds) of cocaine in a waterproof bag hidden behind a grate in the hull of a cargo ship arriving from Brazil. Twenty-three crew members were arrested for the drug trafficking attempt. No word on whether local fish started swimming faster.

4 Cleaning Oil Spills

The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the worst ocean contaminations in American history. Along with commercial fishermen and residents of the Gulf Coast, some of the most severely affected victims were the divers called in to clean up the spill. Despite the large amounts of carcinogenic crude oil floating in the ocean, commercial divers dispatched for this job were assured by BP’s health and safety specialists that they didn’t need extra protective gear. Cleanup crews worked up to 20 hours a day in contaminated waters, and some divers started getting sick before the job was even over. The crude oil itself was one source of contamination, but it’s also likely the dispersants used by the divers to clean it up exposed them to hazardous chemicals. This brand of dispersant has been banned for years in the United Kingdom due to its negative health effects. Since the spill, nearly all the divers have experienced health problems and at least two have committed suicide as a result. A group of around 700 commercial divers started a class action suit against BP in 2010 which has yet to be resolved.

3 Exploring Icebergs

You might have heard of cave diving, but how about diving in a floating ice cave? That’s what professional cave diver Jill Heinerth and her team did in 2019, marking the first ever dive into the crack of an iceberg. During the descent, Heinerth and her diving companion were pelted by falling isopods, a type of cold-water crustacean which she described as “horror story material.” Things got even more spooky when they attempted to leave and found their entrance blocked up with massive chunks of ice that had fallen off the iceberg. The two divers eventually made a hole in the barrier big enough to swim back through, but the terrors didn’t end there.

On the next dive, a strong current started pulling the divers into the iceberg, almost like it was trying to suck them into its freezing belly. Rather than fight the current, they let it take them away from the exit hole and towards another light source that looked like an alternate way out. When Heinerth surfaced, she found their boat was nowhere in sight, having been pulled away by the same current that sucked them into the iceberg. Eventually the crew in the boat found the divers and they cheated death once again.

On the third dive, Heinerth took two other divers with her into the iceberg. After descending into the crevasse, she realized almost immediately that the current was too strong and gestured to her companions to leave. Only once again, they couldn’t leave. After dragging themselves against the current towards the exit, they found themselves unable to get back up the crevasse due to water pouring in. Heinerth came up with the plan of scaling the crevasse wall using tiny holes in the glacier as handholds. After climbing 130 vertical feet of ice, the solemn diver had only one thing to say to her crew: “the cave tried to keep us today.”

2 Sewage Diving

If the story about the sewer divers was too much for you, go ahead and skip this one.

Now that everyone with weak stomachs has scrolled past, those of you left are probably wondering why this list item exists if we already covered sewer diving. That’s because there’s an even worse job than diving in sewer water: diving in liquefied, undiluted poop. Rather than sewer systems, professionals like Austrian diver Gregor Ulrich work in wastewater treatment plants, where they are sent into digestion towers filled with sewage sludge.

At facilities like the Winterthur waste treatment plant, towers are designed to process the sludge using aerobic bacteria fed by compressed air blowers and then moved to larger anaerobic towers where it generates methane gas. This creates a highly flammable environment for the divers who routinely maintain these towers and gas levels must be closely monitored to prevent explosion. Not to mention the fact that the sludge is kept around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) for maximum ick factor. Ulrich says it feels a lot like wallowing in warm mud, and he prefers it to diving in cold water. His bosses must be happy he feels that way, since having divers saves the plant a huge amount of money compared to having to shut down operations and empty the tower out every time it needs to be cleaned.

1 Searching for Lost Cheese

In a 2005 story that could be titled À la recherche du fromage perdu (In Search Of Lost Cheese), a French-Canadian cheesemaker called in professional divers to find 800 kg (about 1763 pounds) of cheese that he had dropped in a lake. Luc Boivin of La Fromagerie Boivin in the Saguenay region of Quebec left the dairy stash underwater on purpose because he thought aging it in a lake would impart a unique flavor. Apparently, he didn’t secure it well enough, because a year later there was no cheese to be found. A team of professional divers combed the Saguenay Fjord using high-tech tracking equipment, but eventually the search had to be called off. Boivin feared if he kept paying for search teams, he would lose more money than the 50,000 Canadian dollars the cheese was worth.

The cheesemaker had been inspired to employ this unorthodox aging technique after a fisherman found a block of his cheese in the lake which Boivin said was the best he’d ever tasted. Maybe it was so good the divers took it and didn’t tell anyone. And hey, they deserve a treat. You’ve seen some of the stuff they deal with at work.

We all have our guilty online pleasures. Be it cute cat videos, makeup tutorials, recipes you’ll never cook, celebrity gossip, and such. For me, I went down the internet rabbit hole and found myself hooked on YouTube videos of volunteer divers solving missing persons’ cold cases.

Using fairly basic equipment like fish finders, they are aiding law enforcement agencies and granting closure to families by bringing their lost loved ones home. While some of these teams may not like being categorized as YouTubers, many of these groups are funded only by YouTube monetization, donations, merch sales, and the occasional reward payment. YouTube is just one means that enables them to finance their amazing work.

Here are ten missing person cases that have been solved by YouTube dive teams.

Related: 10 Times Smartphones And The Internet Saved Lives

10 Jed Hall: Missing since 2018

In the early morning hours of January 22, 2018, 16-year-old Matthew “Jed” Hall was reported missing in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Jed left a note behind indicating that he may attempt suicide; however, a journal was also found detailing plans to run away from home. Despite ongoing searches, his disappearance remained unsolved for over four years. Amazingly, the cold case was solved within 20 minutes by YouTubers Adventures with Purpose (AWP).

“We came into this like we come into all cases,” AWP diver Doug Bishop explained. “We determine if someone is missing and if someone is missing with a vehicle. We specialize in sonar the way that law enforcement doesn’t have the capability. Do we have a cellphone ping, a last known location? Locations that are frequented, etc. That’s how we base the waterways that we need to search, and that’s how we choose those waterways.”

Using a cellphone ping as a starting point, AWP started searching an area of the Snake River. Just 20 minutes later, they were able to locate Jed’s vehicle under about 2.5 meters (8 feet) of water, roughly 68.5 meters (75 yards) away from a boat ramp. The Idaho Falls Police Department later confirmed that they had positively identified that the human remains found in the rear of the vehicle were Jed’s.^[1]

9 Ruth Hemphill: Missing since 2005

Miriam “Ruth” Hemphill, of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was 84 years old when she disappeared on July 22, 2005. Three months earlier, her daughter was found dead, and her death was ruled a suicide. Bill Hemphill told police that his wife Ruth had left a note about their daughter’s death, and he also found a newspaper clipping his wife had cut out concerning a person who drove into a lake.

Bill felt certain that his wife was dead and that she’d driven her car into one of the lakes in the area. Police agreed that this scenario was likely to be correct, but numerous searches were unable to turn up any sign of Ruth or her car.

The case attracted the attention of Jeremy Sides, whose YouTube channel is “Exploring with Nug.” He explained, “I pretty much just went there and just started sonaring the river until I found some cars. We started finding some cars and the third one we found was hers.” He’d found her vehicle in Melton Hill Lake, and when it was pulled out, human remains were located inside.

Sides has said that he just wants to bring some closure to families of cold case victims. “It feels good to be able to help someone. It’s always been in my blood to want to go beyond myself to help somebody else out.”^[2]

8 Nicholas Allen: Missing since 2020

While most of those in law enforcement are more than happy to accept the assistance of the likes of AWP and other volunteer dive teams, sadly, that’s not always the case.

In February 2020, 17-year-old Nicholas Allen disappeared. His cellphone was switched off, so it could not be tracked, but his vehicle was seen in the vicinity of the murky Yadkin River. The family, frustrated by the apparent disinterest of local law enforcement, reached out to AWP. “My gut feeling just keeps telling me he’s in that river… Something bad has happened to him,” Trudy Bernstein, Nicholas’s aunt, said.

Using information provided by the family, AWP used sonar and found the vehicle less than two hours after arriving at the river. However, when they notified local law enforcement of the discovery, the now-viral video shows the officer arriving on the scene displaying an appalling lack of empathy toward the family and outright hostility toward the AWP dive team.

In response to the public backlash, Sheriff Richie Simmons issued an apology to both the family and AWP. Saying in part that the officer’s abrasive attitude was “not empathetic or kind to the family of Nick, and also was not welcoming or appreciative to Adventures with Purpose. Please know that the interaction you had with our investigator does not represent how we train our officers, and his actions are not in accordance with our expectations. There are no excuses for this type of behavior.”^[3]

7 Jan Shupe Smith: Missing since 2021

A Florida family waited ten agonizing months before discovering what happened to 59-year-old Margaret “Jan” Shupe Smith. She went missing on April 2, 2021, driving her little green Kia Soul. The family reached out to AW), who searched for Smith’s car in several bodies of water in the Lakeland area of Polk County.

AWP was about to suspend their search when a Polk County deputy informed them that Smith had been in a minor traffic accident on the day she went missing. This pointed them in the direction of a small retention pond in a new housing development, about a mile from the crash site. Within mere minutes of arriving at the shallow algae-filled pond, Jan’s car was discovered, and a body was located inside. It was hidden just 46 centimeters (18 inches) under the surface of the water.

Smith had gone missing at night, and she reportedly had poor night vision. The neighborhood was also under construction, which could have led to her being confused about her surroundings, causing her to accidentally drive into the unmarked, unfenced pond at the end of an uncompleted road. “This was a tragic accident, and our prayers are with the family,” Polk County Sheriff, Grady Judd, stated. “We’re grateful for Adventures with Purpose working with us in locating the vehicle.”^[4]

6 Timothy Robinson: Missing since 2008

AWP and several other similar dive groups did not initially start out solving cold cases. AWP’s Jared Leisek started his YouTube channel to document his progress toward his goal of diving to pick up 2,000 pounds of trash littering waterways in a three-month timeframe.

The group was doing a live stream of an environmental cleanup project on the Willamette River in Oregon in May 2020 when they pulled the car belonging to missing 56-year-old Timothy Robinson out of the water. Unbeknownst to AWP, Robinson had vanished in November 2008, having left a suicide note saying he intended to drive off a boat ramp. Twelve years later, the live stream was quickly cut when the AWP team realized that the vehicle had human remains inside.

Edward’s niece Jessica was surprised to receive a call from detectives after the discovery and was pleased that the family could finally have some answers 12 years after he disappeared. “Thank you for bringing closure to this family. It’s been a long time, and now he can finally be put to rest. Thank you, and God bless,” she said. ^[5]

5 Brian Goff & Joni Davis: Missing since 2018

Ohio resident 66-year-old Brian Goff was the full-time caretaker of 55-year-old Joni Davis, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury several years earlier. They were last seen leaving a Pizza Hut on June 18, 2018, then they disappeared.

While taking a break from looking into another cold case, Chaos Divers decided to see if they could locate the missing couple. Team member Lindsay Bussick later described how the team found them one mile south of where their cell phone pinged. “When the vehicle came across the sonar, there was no doubt what it was.” Goff and Davis were found in the Ohio River in their submerged Oldsmobile, still strapped in by their seatbelts.

While authorities are unsure exactly how the vehicle ended up in the water, they have confirmed that they have ruled out foul play. Local councilman Jack Regis theorized, “One of them could have had a health problem at that time. Nobody knows that answer, and we’ll never know,” he said. “It’s just a shame, but at least the families got closure finally.”^[6]

4 Carey Mae Parker: Missing since 1991

Young Texan mother of three, Carey Mae Parker, was just 23 years old when she vanished without a trace in March 1991. After more than 30 years, the mystery of her disappearance was finally solved in February 2021, when AWP located her vehicle submerged in the waters of Lake Tawakoni.

The road was closed, and part of the disintegrating vehicle was recovered from the water, matching the description of Parker’s car. AWP returned to the lake several months later and conducted a grid search, recovering the rest of the vehicle, as well as human remains. They also located some items of clothing and a child’s bicycle. Parker’s sister, Patricia Gager, explained that on the day she disappeared, Carey was planning to buy a bicycle for her son’s 6th birthday. “She will still have to be identified through DNA, but I have no other reason to believe [it’s] not her,” she explained.^[7]

7 Samantha Hopper & Her Babies: Missing since 1998

An Arkansas woman, 20-year-old Samantha Hopper, was almost nine months pregnant when she and her two-year-old daughter Courtney were reported missing on September 11, 1998. Hopper was on her way to drop her daughter off before going to a concert in the city of Little Rock when they disappeared.

Chaos Divers and Adventures with Purpose joined forces to bring resolution to the 23-year-old mystery. Using information from the family about Hopper’s habits and schedule, they narrowed down possible locations and split up to search possible locations of interest, scanning different areas of Russellville Lake. Around an hour into the search, they located the vehicle in the lake, submerged in about 3 meters (10 feet) of water.

As the vehicle was being recovered, human remains were found inside. Hopper’s surviving daughter, Dezarae Carpenter, was relieved that her mother and siblings could finally be given a proper farewell. Chaos Divers later posted on Facebook, “while it was gut-wrenching to have to see the tears stream down their faces as they were told the news, it was also incredibly heartwarming to see the smiles on their faces and the weight release from their shoulders knowing they were potentially bringing their loved ones home.”^[8]

2 Erin Foster & Jeremy Bechtel: Missing since 2000

When best friends 18-year-old Erin Foster and 17-year-old Jeremy Bechtel disappeared without a trace on April 3, 2000, the rumor mill in Sparta, Tennesee, went into overdrive. But their families knew that something was terribly wrong. “Just a nightmare, man. Just a total nightmare,” described Erin’s father, Cecil Foster.

Months turned into years, and eventually, Sheriff Steve Page decided to revisit the cold case. Starting over, Page said he came across one piece of paper that changed everything. It was the initial missing person’s report filed by Erin’s family. Details in the report seemed to suggest that authorities had been looking for the missing pair on the wrong side of the county. When Exploring with Nug’s Jeremy Sides expressed interest in the case, Page knew exactly where to send him. Following Page’s hunch, Sides used sonar to scan a section of the Calfkiller River. Just 4 meters (13 feet) below the surface of the water, he located the Pontiac Grand Am driven by Foster.

The car was recovered, and the remains of both Erin and Jeremy were found inside. After over two decades, Sheriff Page was able to tell the families what had become of their children. All indications are that it was just a traffic accident, and they simply ran off the road. “I don’t think I believed it even though he’s got the license plate in his hand,” Erin’s father said.^[9]

1 Janet Farris: Missing since 1992

It turns out you don’t necessarily need any training or even specialist equipment to do this kind of thing. Sometimes all it takes is a little luck and good timing. In British Columbia, Canada, 13-year-old Max Werenka was using his GoPro in Lake Griffen when he and a group of visitors to the lake located a car containing the body of 69-year-old Janet Farris, who was reported missing in 1992.

Farris disappeared while driving from Vancouver Island to a wedding in Alberta. “Two weeks later, we received a phone call from that family in Alberta asking why she never came to the wedding,” Farris’s granddaughter, Erin Farris-Hartley, explained, “So she had actually been missing for two weeks with nobody knowing.”

The GoPro footage that Max provided to the RCMP clearly showed an upside-down car resting on the rocky bottom of the lake. When the vehicle was recovered, authorities finally knew what had happened to Janet. “I think the worst thing was not knowing,” her son, George Farris, explained. “We kind of assumed that maybe she had gone off the road or fallen asleep, or tried to avoid an accident or animal on the road,” he said, adding that “given a sad situation, it’s the best of all outcomes.”^[10]