I made a pile of money as a teenage diver in the early 70's in North Florida during the storm season. A big storm or even hurricane would come to town and spawn a bunch of tornadoes. Those would tear stuff up, including marinas. If a tornado hit a marina, the docks would get smashed and a lot of big boats would sink while still tied up. As soon as the roads were clear enough to drive on, my partner and I would take off for a smashed up marina. We'd park in front with our dive gear hanging out of the car. Security would be tight at the marina gates due to the big expensive boats and yachts being splattered all over the parking lots and waterways.
Then we'd see them: The expensive cars would start to show up and security would let them pass because they were boat owners. Then they'd start to trickle back out. Sure enough, one of them would spot us: Two long haired barefooted guys sitting on a pile of diving gear. Then the negotiations would start. We'd get hired to retrieve electronic gear, jewelry, guns, etc. A few times, we had people lined up waiting for us to get done with one job so they could hire us to go get their stuff.
It was very shallow diving...twenty feet at the most but kind of scary sometimes. It got dark inside the boats and there was lots of stuff floating and drifting around. Most of the time, the boats were sitting upright on the bottom but sometimes they were on their sides. Plus, the water was all stirred up because of the storm so visibility was pretty bad. In case anybodies wondering: Yes, you can hear your partner scream underwater. He got into a little tussle with a large Teddy Bear and thought it was a body. As far as I know, he still hasn't lived down being whupped by a Teddy Bear.
The absolutely most scariest one ever, wasn't scary because of the diving conditions. It was scary because of the "client". This was in the early 70's in Florida. The drug culture was pretty strong...think Miami Vice. My partner and I are sitting there on our gear looking for the next customer and this sporty car pulls up. Out steps several Cuban looking men in flashy suits. My partner and I are both just long haired teenage wannabe hippy scuba divers and these guys kind of intimidated us. One of them talked to us while the other three stood around and watched in all directions. He hired us to go get two big duffle bags and a smaller bag out of his big ocean speed boat. (Cigarette boat) They were all three padlocked and "they better still be locked when you bring them to me". My partner and I decided that if they weren't locked when we got there, we were just going to swim away around the point and take off for Canada! They were still locked, we survived and he paid us several hundred dollars each.
We made several hundred dollars each every day and that wasn't bad for the early 70's for a couple of young divers. After a while of that, we started seeing several other groups of guys doing the same thing we were. We were always able to get the best spot near the gate of the marina though because by then, the security people knew us. Us "salvage divers" were probably the only few people who would get happy when a hurricane was tracking towards town.
