yeah, we've pulled some bodies out. (yes, i have pics, but out of respect for the dead I'm not posting them) sometimes it's a car that has gone in to the river, other times it'll be a sunken boat. sometimes it's just a farmer that has had his irrigation pump get clogged up and he needs someone to go down and get it unclogged.
i guess you could say that it's kind of scary. not so much because you're searching for a body or whatever, but more so because it's in the Mississippi river which is full of sediment....aka you can't see 6 inches in front of your face. it's literally diving by feel. you can't see a fucking thing. it's a very claustrophobic feeling....even though it's technically no different than diving with 100 ft of visibility.
i got started diving because of my old man. he's been a cop for 35 years or so. he was on the police dive team when I was younger. however, due to budget constraints, the official dive team was disbanded 15 years or so ago. so here we are in an area with two good sized rivers, the Mississippi being one of them, and there's no police/fire dive team. so we kind of started just doing our own thing. police/fire will call and we go.
i got my PADI jr. open water certification when I was 12 years old and have been diving ever since. my old man became an instructor 10+ years ago, so that helps, too. now i've damn near got more certifications than i know what to do with.
