Divers wanted to find golf balls $100,000 year

[caver]

 

[Abaco24]

Have you ever seen a 12 foot Gator in Florida in a very small pond? Yea right...

 

[CTDiver01]

I did golf ball diving and the key word is DID. Pulling 3,000 balls per diver a day did happen on more than one occasion but it was offset by the days where the group of us pulled only 3,000 balls in one day. Best day we had was about 12,000 balls between 2 divers but it was a LOOOONNGGG day on a course that wasn't serviced in a long time. It is long days starting at 7am on the course and the diving is the easiest part of it. Once the balls are collected they need to be counted (we had a estimation system for this) bagged, stored and then put on pallets to ship to get them reconditioned.

So if you like long days, diving for hours at a time in black water, not knowing what creatures are lurking out there (I did it in the northeast so alligators weren't a concern but snakes and turtles were), not to mention the other hazards (broken glass, pesticides, goose poop, etc.) then this is a great career.

I do have to say it definitely improved my low vis diving. Now when the vis drops, which it does often in the Northeast wrecks, instead of panicking and wondering how to get out of the wreck, I just feel around for Golf Balls

 

[ZapDiver]

C'mon!!

"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! "

Weren't those the japanese?

 

[JJColorado]

Oh, and don't forget your Golf Ball Diver PADI Specialty Card. If PADI supports this how can you go wrong?

http://http://www.mds-scuba.com/edu/golfball.htm

 

[mike_s]

C'mon!!

"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! "

We can do it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weren't those the japanese?

Germans? Forget it, he's rolling....


Go rent "Animal House" with John Belushi... it'll make sense then

 

[toddthecat]

Google the phone number and you can start to see all the other spam crap associated with it

 

[Jane_dives]

Someone told me you can get 300 an hour for car recovery in canals, and you can catch diseases they can't cure. Anyone know how to get hooked up with that? I have anti-fungal cream.

 

[SeanWilson]

Someone told me you can get 300 an hour for car recovery in canals, and you can catch diseases they can't cure. Anyone know how to get hooked up with that? I have anti-fungal cream.

Insurance companies will pay well for vehicle recovery divers, be it in a canal, lake or pond. Generally speaking, a submerged vehicle is a complete total--however, they still need to ascertain the vehicle was indeed submerged and that there was not something like fraud being committed or that the car wasn't totaled and wrecked before it was submerged (not to mention that the law will require the vehicle's removal for various legal/environmental reasons). I tagged along with my father to help him as a gopher and whatnot when he recovered a vehicle for an insurance company while he was a Chief of Police. He was paid $250 per hr and that was in the late 80's. The per hour rate is any portion of an hour also, so if you just enter at a boat ramp and attach a cable for a tow truck to a submerged vehicle and it only takes 15 minutes, you'll still make $300. How much they pay is pretty much a regional standard and will vary only slightly.

Usually, you have to know someone to get these sorts of gigs. It helps if you have the right gear (cars go in the water in January, too...or in hard to access places), search & rescue experience/training of some sort. Get to know local/regional emergency services administrators and workers, local business association members, tow/wrecker services and of course--the insurance companies locally. Make up some cards, let them know you are a diver in person and be sure to dress/act professional. They can hire anyone and it will cost them the same because they will pay the same--regardless of who is doing the diving--so they can afford to be picky when retaining someone's services as a diver. It's a "blue moon" sort of gig...happens every great once in a while and is largely dependent on whether or not someone who needs your service knows about you or knows someone that does...and whether the person who knows you, likes you and trusts you...

...and is fairly confident they won't have to hire a second diver to retrieve your body.

I don't know my incurable diseases that well...but, there's always Naegleria Fowleri, which you can get from stirring up mud/muck in shallow warm water if your mask leaks I suppose. Anti-fungal cream won't save you from it though. You get that, you die.

 

[walke121]

Ha ha, show me one golf course on this planet where 3,000 golf balls per day are lost in ponds.

What's a more realistic number, 20-50?

TPC Sawgrass fishes out 120,000 balls on #17 alone annually.