Salvage Diving

…and Treasure Hunting Jobs

Have you ever watched the news and some unlucky soul crashed their car into a lake? Or some billionaire sunk his yacht in a freak storm? It happens all the time. And when it does, somebody has to go underwater and bring the car, body, treasure, plane, or ship back up. It could be you – a salvage diver.

Compared to other diving jobs, salvage divers can make a lot of money. To get your foot in the door as a salvage diver, you need to have your recreational diver certification plus technical diving skills, like air mixes, depth diving, and penetration diving. The best place to find work and training are the Navy or the local Police Department.

Typically the salary working for the Navy or your local police department will start around $35,000 U.S. a year. You’ll be doing something that is new every day and keeps the adrenaline pumping.

Working as a salvage diver involves lots of exciting, entertaining work with one main goal – safe retrieval of a lost object. First, you have to locate what you are looking for – boat, plane, car, Jimmy Hoffa, etc. The water could be deep or shallow, clear warm Caribbean water or dark cold silty mountain lakes – the search process can leave you underwater for hours on end – so be sure to have strong technical diving skills. After you locate the lost object, you need to arrange to lift the object out of the water. This can be done numerous ways – by lifts, by hand, by hooks. Once the lost object is back to the surface, your job is done.

Salvage diving can be dangerous work. With variable underwater conditions, extreme depths, shifting salvage due to currents, and unsuccessful searches – it doesn’t quite compare with the safety of the cubicle. But that is the exact reason people love their work. If being underwater sounds fun, try working as a salvage diver.

A fascinating subset of salvage diving is treasure hunting. It sounds glamorous and incredibly lucrative. Can you imagine finding lost gold bars or ancient artifacts that have been lost for centuries? Making your fortune by diving – Unfortunately, it’s not as great as it sounds. Treasure hunters have the same goal as salvage divers – safe retrieval of a lost object. They just don’t know where the object is!

Treasure hunters spent most of their time researching where under the water the treasure is. Once they think they know, they venture out, and dive around looking for the lost fortunes. Most of the time they are wrong, and don’t make a dime. Once in awhile they are right on, and can bring up impressive treasures. If treasure hunting is your calling, be sure you trust the people you work with. Treasure pirates are not uncommon.