Dive Team still reminded of Sandy: Items lost and memories found

It has been said that all sorts of things come in threes.  For the Point Pleasant Beach First Aid Dive Team, memories of Hurricane Sandy recently came back in threes.  But rather than cringe at the destruction and loss from the storm, these volunteer divers smiled at the recoveries.

A Friendly Face

Last November, Dive Team members were training off a beach in Bay Head when a reminder of the historic storm appeared in the form of a smiling face.  The divers had been in the water nearly three hours, swimming and practicing underwater navigation.  Just as they crawled out, cold and tired, Nancy Bowden just happened to be strolling down the beach.  They had first met each other nearly four years earlier.

One of the homes demolished by Hurricane Sandy had belonged to Nancy’s grandmother.  In the storm, flood waters and pounding surf had lifted the house off its foundation.  The powerful waves and wind then transported the entire structure from Mantoloking proper to an island clear across Barnegat Bay.  There, it finally ran aground and collapsed down on itself.

In March 2013, the Dive Team was in the bay conducting boat operations training, surrounded by storm debris.  Along the way, the crew met Nancy with friends and family, who themselves were attempting to salvage personal effects from the family home at its new address.  In the collapse, many of the contents of the lower floors had effectively been pushed up into the attic.  Incredibly, the roof was still intact, so everything directly underneath it had remained protected!

Divers assisted with the loading and transport of two boatloads of household goods back to dock.  Furniture, books, clothing, photos, and a hand-made cedar chest full of blankets would all be used to recreate some of the memories from the 85-year old house.  Nancy smiled with some hope as the divers wished her family well.

Running into Nancy Bowden on the beach two months ago was as happenstance as it was in the bay just months after the hurricane.  In the meantime, the family home has been rebuilt.  And she’s still smiling.

A Forgotten Find

Last December, the Dive Team conducted another training dive on the same Bay Head beach.  This time, divers found an entire brick chimney in four feet of water. 

Chet Nesley, Chief Diver of the Dive Team, said at the time, “We were just here two weeks ago, and this was not out like this.”  He thinks that this was likely yet another piece of debris that had been deposited from the superstorm, but only recently exposed.  Shortly after the storm, there were reports from a fishing vessel that an entire house roof was adrift two miles offshore, so burying a chimney on the beach would have been small potatoes for Sandy. 

He continued, “There is absolutely no marine growth on any of the brick.  It just goes to show you how much sand the ocean can move around in a short period of time!”

Returning a Memory

Also last fall, a remnant of the historic storm was recovered, quite by chance, in Shark River Inlet.  Chief Nesley was diving in the inlet by the Ocean Avenue Bridge in Belmar.  While salvaging fishing gear off the bottom, he picked up a wooden plank to move it out of his search area.  However, this board had a mind of its own, falling back down on him.  Twice.

Not wanting to get hit by it a third time, he moved to jam it into a rocky crevice.  That was when his hand slid down the plank, hitting a metal plaque still firmly attached.

Nesley removed the plank from the water.  Brushing the plaque off, he discovered that it had been dedicated to a “husband, father, grandfather, and fireman” lost on 9-11.

“I don’t normally dive in this area, but I had followed a line of fishing debris out to this spot,” explained Nesley.  “And then it wouldn’t let me throw it away!  This was meant to be found.”

This was actually the third memorial plaque that Point Pleasant First Aid divers have located and salvaged.  The other two finds were posted on several social media outlets, with one already being returned to the family of the dedicatee.

The recovery of the most recent plaque, dedicated to Charles W. Mathers, was posted on “Barnegat Bay Island”, a Facebook page, and Jersey Shore Hurricane News.  JSHN acted as liaison to make contact with the Mathers family.  Arrangements were made to return the plaque.

Marjorie Mathers Kane met with the First Aid Dive Team on January 15, 2017 and was presented with the memorial plaque honoring her father.  She expressed her excitement and gratitude while sharing its story.  It had been dedicated on a bench on the Sea Girt boardwalk, prior to being washed away and lost to the ocean during Sandy.

For four years, anytime Marjorie’s mother visited from Galveston, they would walk the beach.  They would turn over debris, every time wondering, “Could this be it?” with a slim hope of the plaque one day returning.

After four years, it insisted on being found. 

Three months, three Sandy memories.

Sinker Dive for Flea Market...

Sunday was a busy day for the team, we sorted and separated all 2100 pounds of sinkers for the coming fishing flea market. We separated the one we can resell and the ones we sell for scrap and then by size. With everyone pitching in and doing a job we were able to get the job done in just over three hours. Loading the sorting table with sinkers and sorting and emptying the bucket as they filled and weighting and marking the full buckets we had a job for everyone. We may not get to the 3500 pounds we had last year, but we still have over a ton and we still have a few weeks to go before the flea market

After finishing with the sorting we had time to get a dive in, so we checked the water at Manasquan Inlet and saw it was pretty good so we geared up and headed to Shark River Inlet.

  By the time we got there it was already raining and the wind was just starting to blow, but the ocean was not all that kicked up yet. We checked and you could see the bottom and we made plans to start out by the mouth of the inlet as the tide was still coming in. Rich G. Joe S, Joe S Greg and I headed out to the end of the jetty with Brandon B. as our surface support.

    Getting in was what we have been training on the last few months and it showed today, everyone got in with no problems even with a three foot swell rolling in the inlet. Once in the water and on the bottom it turned out to be really nice, we had visibility around 5-10 feet and some surge but nothing that we couldn’t handle.

This was a sinker dive right from the start and everyone hit good spots and sinker tubes started fill fast. In an hour the tubes were full and lift bags deployed and recovered. Rich G had wanted to try to recover a rail post from the old boardwalk that is still sitting on the bottom and with all the team working he got his wish. Not only did he get one, he got two!

Joe S and I wanted to hit a good spot that I had found, so we both geared up and headed back in. As we were getting ready the two bridge tenders came down and were talking to us about what we do and what’s on the bottom, so the team made some new friends we got a picture of all of us all together

   Joe and I headed back to where we entered on the first dive and got back in. By this time the weather was starting to pick up, with the raining coming down harder and the wind blowing stronger and the waves starting to pick up and most of all the light was starting to fade. But with what little time we had left we filled our sinker tubes and headed up to get out.

   Joe went first and I waited on the bottom so the guys on the surface only had to work to help one guy out at a time. I started swimming down the inlet to get away from the surge and the swells that had by now picked up. As I hit the surface Joe was out of the water and I threw the flag line with the tube and lift bag up to Rich and he pulled it in leaving my hands free. By now it was dark and time to go.

   But in those two dives Rich got his rail posts and the team got two hundred and ten pounds of sinkers and we made two new friends in Katie and Katie our bridge tenders

I think we may need a bigger table. The new sinker total is now 2406.4 pounds

New Years Dive ~2017~

The tradition lives! The team came out and did our first dive of the year as it has since we were formed over twenty years ago. This year’s conditions weren't all that bad, we had 50 degrees of air temperature and bright sunny day to come out to.

The water could have been better, visibility was 2-5 feet and the temperature was 43 degrees. But we did have a high tide to work with. In the past we have had temperatures of below zero to 60 degrees and low tides and high tides and good visibility and really bad visibility. It really doesn’t matter because if we’re called we will be ready, good weather or bad weather we have been there and done that.

   Everyone one came up with something, keys, knifes, lures and sinkers and one every nice J.R.Lynch bottle. We added 54.4 pounds of sinkers to our total for the year which is now at 2000.8 pounds and we have to the end of February to match last year’s 3550 pounds.

   Recovery of the sinkers is one way the team raises money for equipment and things we use. We sell the sinkers back to the fishermen at the Ocean 1 Fire Company’s fishing flea market at is held in last February.

  The team does work cleaning the bottom removing the mountains old fishing lines that covers the bottom, which is a problem for the fishermen and the fish and crabs that gets trapped in the lines. So by recovering the sinkers and other debris we help the fishermen and the environment.

   If you would like to see what we see, go to yotube.com and click on chiefdiver34 and you can watch the video we shoot. You will also see how the conditions can change, from good visibility to bad visibility.

Sea Glass Festival...

On Thursday the dive team was invited to take part in the Sea Glass festival held at The White Sands on Ocean ave. We were asked to set up our public educational display.

Sue L, Big Joe S, Brandon B, Tom T and I answered the call and put together the display and manned the booth for the whole day. 

How big could a sea glass festival be? There were hundreds of people in and out all day and we were so busy talking to people we didn’t know where the time went. With our underwater display and seashell case and ship wreck artifacts and just about every type of bottles you could wish for, with every one asking questions it was a day long talk fest.

Beach Clean-up...

It was a very busy week for the first aid and the dive team, with the storm that blew through Saturday afternoon and just about sunk the town that didn’t stop calls from coming in. But the first aid started it off with a diver coming in to Coast Guard Station Manansquan with a diver with demcompression sickness. The first aid crew had to load the patient and drive him over to the school ball field to wait for a Coast Guard helicopter to land.

After loading and seeing the patient off, it was back to many heat calls and other calls coming in. Then the storm came with in strong winds driving rains and two lighting strikes on the beach.

It was after the storm had passed that the dive team got called to try to recover all the umbrellas and beach chairs that had been blown in to the swimming areas up and down the beach. The dive truck was loaded up and headed down to the foot of Broadway to start the recovery effort. The chief diver and team member Rich G suited up and started at the inlet and headed south covering from 8 foot deep water out to 12 foot area. With the good visibility the divers were able to see over ten to fifteen feet making easy to see and recover anything they came across. 

The team members Joe (OJ) S, Ali B and Evan S followed in 346 and came right down on the beach with the truck giving the team away to move all our equipment down the beach. Debris started coming up in minutes, whole umbrellas and beach chairs and parts of both were everywhere. One team would search and the others would come out and pick up what was recovered so the divers didn’t need to come up the beach.

The first team covered half way to the pier at Martel’s and then the other team went in and covered the water down to Martel’s pier. 24 beach umbrellas four beach chair many pairs of sun glasses and reading glasses were also recovered. With the coming darkness the team made one pass of the end of the inlet jetty to make sure that any debris would be a problem with boat traffic.

Most team members were just making home after getting all the teams gear ready for the team to return in the morning to finish search the beach’s for debris before they opened for swimmers. But after midnight a call came in for mutual aid to the Boro for a car in the Point Pleasant canal. All the same divers and Sue L returned and were ready for whatever we were need to do. But after a few hours we were released and no divers were needed to go in the water.

Sunday morning the team returned to the beaches and the inlet to finish the search for storm debris. With Both Joes, Greg, Andy, and Tommy Lee the searches were finished with many more umbrellas and beach chairs came up. Many thanks to the life guards who kept the swimmers out of the area until we could finish our sweeps and make the areas safe.

You would think that would end our busy week end, but you would be wrong a few first aid calls and as the dive duty crew was sitting down by the foot of Broadway a first aid call for a person in trouble on the jetty came in and you couldn’t have picked a more remote spot. To get the patient into the ambulances it took a team effort of the Jenks life guards, a Jenk’s guard on one of their quads two first aiders and two divers to carry the patient out to where the divers pulled down a fence to get the quad closer to the jetty and the patient. We did find out that the new 340 can go on the beach in two wheel drive.
So ended the busy week end, thanks to the many first aiders and divers who came out to answer all the calls. 

Boat Races....

Sunday was the offshore grant prix boat races in Point Pleasant Beach. The first aid squad and dive team were on duty to cover the races and the general public who lined the jetty and the beach to veiw the races.

The First aid had all four ambulances at the foot of Broadway ready to respond to any calls for the racers or for first aid calls in town. This was a good spot for with all the traffic and the construction going on at the Coast Guard Station it gave them a clear was to respond. Luckily it was a uneventful day. With nothing happening during the race.

The dive team was stationed all along the jetty with surface rescue gear ready to respond to anyone falling into the rocks or the water. The team also had first aid equipment and full sets of dive gear in the squads 5 ton army truck which was on the beach right along side the jetty.

The weather wasn’t looking that good first thing in the morning but cleared up as the right around race time. Large crowds of people lined the jetty from the parking lot at Channel dr all the way out to the end of the jetty. They stayed on the jetty untill the race boats passed and then climbed down the rocks to the beach and  walked down to watch the race from the start finish line and did the same for the second race.

The squads army truck was a big hit with the public. Many pictures were taken with kids sitting in the driver’s seat and standing in front. The truck is an important piece of equipment for the first aid and the dive team as we can drive right from the road right on to the sand and drive down the beach carrying anything we need.

Two of the teams divers were on the Coast Guard Auxiliary launch 5 patrol boat as back up divers for the Coast Guard and in case something bad happened and more drivers were needed. Launch 5 is a 52 foot patrol boat and is a ideal platform for divers to work out of.

The race was run and no one fell or was hurt so it was a great day.

Lost & Found...

If you have been diving long enough you will find things, Old bottles, sinkers, fishing lures and if you’re lucky enough good things too. Like old coins and paper money, jewelry and dive gear. Some of these things we do get to keep, but we do to try to return the things we find.

We post pictures and stories on our blog site and face book page of the things we find and sometimes we get to return them. In one case a pocket book was recovered from the inlet and was turned over to the police and was waiting for the owner when she came to the police headquarters to report the lost.

 A week later the team was down at the inlet getting ready to dive and this same woman came up to thank us for recovering her pocket book.

 In another case that happened just a few weeks ago and a spear gun was recovered from the inlet. We took some pictures and we posted them and low and behold the owner contacted us and we were able to return it. Luckily the owner had marked the gun with red paint and you could still see the paint on it. The spear gun had been in the inlet for months.

After hurricane sandy team members Steve K and Joe S and I were on Gull Island and came across the remains of some benches and found these brass plates embedded in them. We recovered the plates and posted pictures of them and the pictures got posted to New Jersey Hurricane news also. A few weeks later we got a call about one of the plates and we were to meeting up with the owner and return one of them. We also found out the benches were from Spring Lake boardwalk.

There are times the team gets asked to try and find things lost in the water, we do our best to find the time and the divers to go have a look. Once the coast guard station at Manasquan inlet asked us for some help in looking for a wedding band that was dropped in the water at their dock. I answered the call that day and spent four in the water looking. The bottom there is very soft mud so it was a very slow search. Having used up what air I had I told them I would be back tomorrow with more help and we would do our best to find it.

I returned the next day with Sue L and Joe S and then team member Brandon C. This time we were able to talk to the guy who dropped the ring and found out the true area to look in. I had spent the whole day before in the wrong area some twenty feet from the rings location.

But Sue and Joe had no trouble finding it and were in and out of the water in maybe twenty minutes and returned it to one very happy and surprised guardsmen who thought it was gone forever...

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It’s not always small things either. After a northeast storm the team was asked to try and find a large section of steel pipe lost behind a house on Inlet drive. The owner had divers out looking for it but they came away with nothing. After checking out the area we planned a search pattern and found the pipe three quarters buried in the sand. Not only did the team find it, we recovered it and raised it out of the water and set it back in the owners yard.

The best one was a call for help by someone who lost his ice boat in the ice during one of the years that the bay iced over. On the way to the marina we would be working out of we came up with a plan to find the ice boat. After getting geared up we headed out to the water and found that finding it would be no problem at all, as the sail was sticking up out of the ice by seven feet. The hard part was chopping the boat out of the six inches of ice.

The weather was not helping us out. The air temperature was 5 below zero and the wind was blowing over twenty miles per hour. But we got the mast and sail down and off the boat and chopped a hole in the ice big enough to get the boat out. As we put the boat down on the ice the wind tried to blow it down the bay, but quick thinking by Doug H, Tom C and Sue L stopped it before it got too far.

These are just a few of the thing we have done over the last nineteen years. We do try to help out and we never ask for pay, if they want to make a donation to the team that’s OK. To us this is a way to show off what we can do and it’s good training for the team.