Lost Ring Found Orange Beach

I got a call from Jake who just lost his wedding band that he had forever. Jake was vacationing when his cherished ring was lost but lived in Atlanta and had to leave before I arrived but his Daughter and her family were still at the condo. He told me his ring slid off his finger at the end of a dock in about 9 to 10 foot of water. The dock was on the Old River Sound off Perdido Key. This part of Old River has quite a bit of boat traffic and the day I was there the tide was moving out, that made visibility in the water near zero. I used SCUBA gear on this recovery because of the water depth and it gave me more time to on the bottom to search uninterrupted. I had to use my knife tool to sink in the bottom to hold my position in the current and lay flat on the bottom while searching that immediate area. There was a lot of items that my metal detector located including an old decomposing crab trap. I started a systematic grid search carefully moving junk items on the bottom so I could scan for the lost ring. After about an hour or so the last item not search was under the old broken down crab trap. The trap fell apart in pieces with and bottom portion buried in the sand. I carefully moved the trap piece by piece inspecting each for the ring. To see through the murky water my face had to be two to three inches away from what I was looking at. Once the trap was moved there were still several item the detector located buried in the sand. I used a pin pointer detector to separate the item and carefully fanned the sand away and pressed my face to the bottom to see what was uncovered. The third item scanned was the charm, I fanned the spot, waited for the current to float off the turbidity and pressed by face right on the bottom. There it was barely visible, just the circular edge barely above the sand. The ring fell within an inch of the trap debris where my detector couldn’t discriminate the difference. Jake’s Daughters and Son-In-Law took custody of Jake’s wedding ring that he was emotionally attached and had to have back. I was happy I could be of service and had a sense of accomplishment in finding the ring in such murky water.