I am an expert metal detectorist with the knowledge, skill, and experience to recover your lost items on land and underwater. Please text or call as soon as possible: (703) 598-1435
Recovered By Master SCUBA Instructor Rob Ellis
Found May 16th, 2023
Erik was enjoying the day at EZ Cruz Marina, when a gust of wind took his hat and prescription glasses. With help from his friends, Erik tried using a long-handled net to scoop the glasses. Visibility, rocks, and depth made netting his glasses impossible. Sharon, the manager from EZ-Cruz marina, remembered that I recovered a ring last year and gave Erik my contact information.
A weighted Drop Line for Reference
When Erik called, he told me exactly how and where the glasses entered the water. He even sent me photos with drawings.
Gear Preparation
My divemaster (AKA: my wonderful wife) and I checked in with the marina office. We assessed the conditions and finalized how to conduct the search. We dropped a weighted “down line” from the dock to mark the center of the search area where the glasses fell into the water. The easiest entry was from the shore, with a hundred-yard swim. We attached a safety rope after reviewing tender-diver signals.
Most dock bottoms have a lot of metal debris, so I tethered the detector at the surface for my first search by gentle touch and use of a Garrett Pinpointer.
As I descended into the murky water, I lost all visibility at about 5 feet. I hit bottom at about twelve feet, and it was dark, very dark. Even my flashlight wouldn’t penetrate the murky water. I very carefully used my fingertips and pinpointer with a search pattern using the drop line as a reference. Within just a few minutes, I felt a pair glasses and carefully put them in my bag. There are always a lot of sunglasses around docks, and I wasn’t sure these were Erik’s. I ascended, gave the bag to my wife who compared them to a picture Erik had provided. She told me they were the right ones by signaling me the OK sign.
We were so glad to return Erik’s glasses. The actual search by touch took less than ten minutes. But the preparation, planning for the search & recovery, and clean-up took several hours. It was worth it to return such a nice young man’s glasses.
Rob Ellis: Metal Detector Expert…Call/text ASAP, (703)-598-1435
Don’t give up. Many of my clients have bought, borrowed, or rented a metal detector before calling me. Just because someone has a tool, it doesn’t mean they know how to use it. I use state of the art equipment, and I have thousands of hours of experience searching on land and underwater. If you have tried using a detector without success, please call to see if I can help.
I received a call from Scott asking if I could help find his lost wedding ring in his front yard! I asked him the usual questions like…When did he lose it? How did it happen? and Did he have a good idea of the exact area where he lost it? And all of the answers that Scott gave me indicated that his lost wedding ring should not be very difficult to find.
Armed with that information and my trusty Garrett, ATMax metal detector I headed for Orlando with high hopes. Made me think of how many people have lost rings, earrings and necklaces while playing with their favorite pet! Sometimes they are able to find their lost item and at other times the grass or sand swallows their personal treasure, never to be seen again.
Scott on the other hand was very sure of the exact spot where he was when he felt his ring come off. So I began my grid search just wide of the area he indicated and it took only 5 minutes to get the solid, shallow signal I was looking for. And Scott was thrilled to get his lost wedding ring back and I was honored and thankful to have been given the opportunity to help him!
Lost something recently or years ago…maybe I can help. Call, leave a message or text me ASAP! I would be honored to help you.
Mike McInroe…glad to be a part of theringfinders.com
I received a call and message from Somer the afternoon of Saturday, October 30th, 2020 (Halloween mind you) sharing she lost her engagement ring in the front yard of her residence. She explained to me the night before friends were over for a social gathering. Somer mentioned she took her ring off to show one of her friends. The friend gave it back while Somer was getting her mail from the mailbox during the evening hours. She decided to put the ring on the mail instead of back on her finger. Well, the ring fell off the mail into the grass (so she strongly believed and thought!) Somer and her fiancé, Nate, spend a better part of the day on their hands and knees looking for ring without success. So, I took my trusty CTX 3030 and began swinging my machine with a small coil since there was a lot of targets in the yard and very close together. My first target rang up “gold” and on the surface…Somer was excited thinking and believing it was her ring…I did too…wrong!!…just under the eyesight of the grass, up popped a nickel. Both Somer and I were thoroughly disappointed. I continued detecting and digging anything that was noting on my machine 2” or less knowing and expecting a surface find. While I was doing my part searching the grass meticulously and the path Somer took from the mailbox to the garage, Nate was meandering on the road near the mailbox, he saw the ring near a manhole cover…right out in the open. None of us have any idea how the ring found its way from the mailbox on the street and not on the grass. Though, I did not find the ring directly, I’d like to believe I shared in the success of rescuing. Ring found and put back on Somer’s hand. She was ecstatic and was a team effort to find. We wish Somer and Nate many wonderful future memories in the years to come. Somer was uncomfortable having her face posted. GB Ring Pic 103020
Mike McInroe…Metal Detector Specialist…Call ASAP Anytime…24/7…321-363-6029
Brandon and his father in law were enjoying a guys day out fishing under Johns Pass bridge when all of a sudden Brandon hooked a nice size red fish and managed to get it up onto the dock. The next challenge was to secure the fish for a decent photo and in the process Brandon got a bunch of fish slime on his hand. So what is ones natural instinct when your hand is covered in slime? You shake your hand in hopes that the slime will go sailing off, but more than slime went flying! Brandon was shocked when he felt his wedding ring slip off of his hand and doubly shocked when it landed out in the water. He could not believe what just happened and the thrill and excitement of catching a nice fish disappeared as the reality of what just took place started to sink in. The water was way to deep for Brandon to try his hand at recovering it and actually it was close to 17 feet deep with lots of rocks and concrete boulders and sand and a fairly swift current on top of it all.
This vacation was a much needed one for Brandon and his wife and in-laws as he had to miss last years special vacation due to his military deployment. And having been married for only two years he was having a very hard time dealing with the loss of his wedding ring and having to end their vacation on that bitter note. Later that evening Brandon was looking online for some help and typed in “Underwater ring searching” and up came theringfinders.com! Most all members of theringfinders can search yards, parks and shallow water ways but only a few of us are scuba certified and that was definitely what Brandon was needing. It was a two and a half hour drive to Johns Pass in St. Pete, Florida and after obtaining the proper permission we met and proceeded to set up on the dock under the bridge. I then took two PVC poles that I joined together in order to drive down into the bottom to mark the center of the dive area. Brandon said his ring could be in a 20 foot square area and I was hoping to somehow mark the bottom. Unfortunately the PVC pole was 4 foot short plus the bottom was very rocky with small areas of sand here and there. So I opted to follow one of the dock pilings to the bottom and then with my back to the piling I made my way along the bottom using my Nokta/Makro-Pulse Dive, handheld metal detector to scan for Brandon’s lost wedding ring. Right away it was obvious that it would be difficult as the concrete had rebar in each large block and the detector was picking up all kinds of signals. I slowly made my way forward, barely being able to see what was in front of me. I determined to check each signal and found some fishing sinkers and other large objects. Being the ring was lost the day before it seemed likely that it would not be buried very deep in the sand. For 15 minutes I scanned all around until I came to two large chunks of concrete and as I scanned over the top I noticed a small area of sand and it gave a sharp signal. I swam closer to see what it was and I could barely make out a small circular shaped object. As my hand closed over the item it was obvious that it was a ring. I had a hard time containing myself and let out an underwater scream of Praise!! I slowly ascended to the top and stuck my hand out of the water with the ring on my pinky finger. Brandon’s father in law was videoing with his Gopro and Brandon was in total shock! He could not believe it was his ring and asked me what kind of markings it had on it. I told him and he still seemed dubious!
How I thank God for allowing me to find Brandon’s lost wedding ring and for keeping me safe during the whole ordeal!
Ryan’s Platinum Wedding Band Recovered from Deep Creek River, Annapolis MD
Ryan and Son, Sebastian Finally Celebrate the Return of Dad’s Platinum Wedding Band
I received a phone call from a gentleman named Ryan who found out about my ring recovery service through THE RING FINDERS directory. He was playing in the water with his son and while they were wrestling and having a good time, Ryan’s platinum wedding band slipped off his finger and ended up at the bottom of the Deep Creek River located close to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Annapolis, Maryland. Ryan’s thirteen year-old boy named Sebastian felt really bad that the ring slipped off during their time of fun in the water between 25 to 35 feet from the shore. So, he helped his father look everywhere in the river, using their hands to reach down and search for the missing ring. Unfortunately time continued to tick and nobody could find Ryan’s wedding band. After a very long time hunting for the ring, the family gave up and decided to seek help from others. This particular swimming area is on a private beach where only members of the community can enjoy accessing this part of the river. Ryan and his wife found somebody who was local in the community who owned a metal detector and he was quite happy to volunteer to search for the missing ring. I got the impression that the gentleman searched quite a bit, but he could not find the ring in all of the time that he was detecting. I believe there was a second gentleman who saw the search taking place and he also attempted to find the ring with his metal detecting equipment. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find it either.
I was delighted to receive Ryan’s call for help because I love assisting with searches that have to do with lost items that are so important and meaningful to the owners who lose them. All I wanted to do was to bring Ryan’s ring back to him from the depths of the river and allow for that special item to continue its special story that started many years back when it was placed on Ryan’s finger on his wedding day.
Ryan shared with me all of the details about what had happened over the weekend when the ring slipped off his finger. Once I finished inquiring about the incident, I felt very good about how I was going to retrieve the ring for him. We set up a time when I would come out to the beach and begin my search for the missing ring.
I will never forget the moment that I entered the private beach area and observed how absolutely beautiful the surroundings were. The sun was rising early that morning and the water was so peaceful and most inviting. Just as I finished putting on my wetsuit, Ryan arrived and he took me over to the beach where he was playing in the water with his son Sebastian when the ring came off his finger. He provided for me the square footage that I needed to work with and he was pretty confident of the section where the ring came off. Ryan had told me that after the ring fell into the water, he immediately took notice of the debris of sticks that were in the vicinity of where the ring fell and where he was searching the majority of the time. That was very important in my own recovery attempt. I finished asking him questions and headed back to the car where I pulled out my detector, sand scoop and my other water gear. Then, I headed back to the sand where I tested out my equipment and moved into the warm summer water.
Immediately, I started to grid the area, one foot at a time. Going back and forth 30 feet and then 30 feet back the other way. I went slow and proceeded carefully, hoping I would not miss an inch of potential space where the ring may have rested. The depth of water that I was searching in was approximately three to four feet. It was quite shallow but the biggest challenge of the hunt was to make sure that the detector was discriminating out signals that were not associated with the platinum band. Also, because there was trash here and there in the water, I needed to be extremely careful not to overlook the possibility that certain metal signals could in fact be the ring.
Ryan was in the water with me and he was on standby to help me if I needed to get clarification regarding where he was with his son when the ring disappeared. I tried to stay in the proximity of where the sticks were because he clearly remembered leaning down and searching with his hands where those sticks were when the ring had slipped off just moments earlier. Each time I brought up the scoop to see what I discovered inside of it, there was a lot of silt and muddy content to contend with. It took a while to sift out all of the mud that was at the bottom of the water in order to just identify the target in the scoop. I hit a lot of targets and over and over again I was pulling out all kinds of coins and other types of metal debris but no ring would be discovered. I was so hoping that another detectorist did not walk off with the ring. These ideas start playing with your mind especially when the area has been searched prior to one’s arrival. You just don’t know who you are dealing with at times, and you hope that some other detectorist was honest and would have turned the item in to the owner if he had found it.
One hour turned into two hours of searching, and two hours of searching turned into three completed hours and I still did not find the missing wedding band. I believe it was sometime after the third hour that I needed to call it quits for the day. I apologized to Ryan that I had not found it quite yet, but I assured him that if it was still in the water, he would get that ring back and he would definitely get it back on my watch. He seemed pretty confident in my confidence, and so we left each other that late morning with the agreement that I would try to return in the next few days to a week to try again.
It’s very common for searches to go into many more hours before a detectorist discovers the missing object. In this particular case, I may have walked right over the ring and didn’t detect the object if it was masked by some other type of metal that prevented me from locating my target. It’s possible that when I did my grid search, I could have just missed the target by inches, even though I was going back and forth in a straight line. When you’re in the water, it’s a lot harder to keep exact lines because you don’t have the same kind of markers that you can set up when you are on land.
I gathered my gear up and got out of my wetsuit before heading to my next appointment for the day. I was not discouraged but I was disappointed that I couldn’t pull the ring from the water that morning. Like I said before, your mind starts playing tricks on you and you need to keep positive. One of my metal detectorist friends and highly successful California RING FINDER named Stan always reminds me, “Don’t think the negative thoughts. Stay positive and believe that you are not wasting your time. You must believe it’s still there, and that no one plucked it from the water”. I stayed positive until my return!
I kept in touch with Ryan throughout the next few days so that we could set up another scheduled search window of time to again attempt a recovery of his ring. At first it was not looking good for my schedule to be able to try again to pull the ring out of the water before I was to go on vacation for 10 days. But, I worked it out so that I would make it over to the private beach area on my way to the East Coast during my vacation. The first leg of my family’s vacation journey would be to stop over at the area where Ryan lost his ring and attempt to pull the ring out before continuing across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge over to the Eastern shore and then to Ocean City, Maryland. I was so hopeful that I could find the ring so that Ryan did not have to wait until I returned from my vacation. Also, it would make me feel so good to complete that mission before heading to the beach for my own personal downtime. Ryan was quite encouraged with what I was able to set up for him and we agreed to see each other at the end of the week.
Once I loaded up the car for vacation, me and my son Danny headed off to our first stop which was Ryan’s community beach area where he lost his ring. My wife Jennifer would not be on the trip so it was just me and our son. When we entered the parking lot to the private beach on Deep Creek River, I put on my dive suit while Danny took a walk in the neighborhood. I gathered all of my gear together and assembled it on the sand as I waited for Ryan to arrive. Once again, he thanked me for taking this segment of time to help find his ring before heading to the East Coast for my 10 day vacation. I told him it was my pleasure and that it had been bothering me since I was here the last time when I didn’t find it. I was really looking forward to getting in the water. I remember saying a prayer and asking for God’s help to recover his lost wedding band. I’m a firm believer in prayer.
Once I got the detector on and grabbed a hold of the scoop, I was walking into the water from the shoreline and went to the spot where Ryan and I agreed would be a probable area where the ring may have disappeared. I began to grid back-and-forth in the same way that I did my grid work the last time I came out. I did about a 40 foot by 40 foot area this time and centralized my detecting where a lot of the sticks were that Ryan had pointed out last week. At some point during my detecting, Ryan headed out to go pick up his son Sebastian and he would eventually return back to the beach. I said goodbye to him and he wished me much success.
Because of the other metal that was below the surface of the water, I had to be extremely careful not to go too fast over the areas that I was detecting so that I would not miss the target that I was looking for. My detector is very good at recovery speed (which is how fast the detector is picking up the signal with the speed that you are moving the coil back and forth over the potential targets). However, one must be extremely careful not to put the detector to the test to the point where human error might play a role in missing the item that you are searching for.
I may have searched for about an hour and I was getting concerned that I would end up with the same results that I accrued the previous week. However, I still had to keep telling myself that it must be here and that those other detectorists just missed it or that they did not take Ryan’s ring. I told myself that the others must have just missed the target because of other metal that was possibly masking it. Or perhaps they did not set their detectors deep enough or maybe their detectors could not go down far enough to detect the signal we were looking for. I kept searching back-and-forth going from where the pier was and then extended out a ways and then back towards the pier in parallel with the beach. I was still getting all kinds of positive signals, but none of them panned out.
At some point, after finishing another set of grid passes, I hit another signal that was in the range of Ryan’s platinum wedding band! On my machine it was registering the numbers: 14 and 15, which is in the ballpark of a nice man’s size platinum ring. However, the signal was very choppy and inconsistent. I could have walked right over it, thinking it was trash. Perhaps the other gentlemen did the same. It sounded either too deep or too trashy to scoop up. One could almost assume that the target was probably a rusty old bottle cap and not worth looking at. I went over the target from a couple of different angles just to make sure that this was something legitimate enough to scoop up. Even though it didn’t give off a signal that normally would have convinced me to take the time to pull it up, I decided to go for it anyways. I was at the point where beggars could not be choosers! In addition to the bad signal I was faced with, I was having problems scooping up my targets that day because of the conditions at the bottom of the water. I had to be wise on how I was spending my time and this was one target that I didn’t want to spend time on, but I did so regardless of the conditions.
Speaking of time, I realized that with every minute that passed, my vacation time was being used up and I knew that my son Danny was looking forward to getting to the beach as quickly as possible. However, he is such a patient and kind young man and he was quite supportive in wanting to see a happy ending to this story before going to the beach. So, I tested the signal out a few times and I was convinced that it was strong enough of a signal to scoop up but I had no confidence that this was Ryan’s platinum ring. Again, the signal was so choppy and disconnected. It wasn’t a strong bang of a signal. Yet, it’s so important in metal detecting to not count anything out and to really doubt your confidences. I scooped up the first bit of debris and when I checked with the detector to see if I had gotten the target inside the scoop, it was still in the water. I did this again and repeated the process a couple more times until finally the detector indicated that there was nothing at the bottom of the water where I was detecting. The object must have finally been caught in the scoop. I then sifted out everything inside of the scoop and to my huge surprise, there it was! I found it! I found Ryan’s missing platinum wedding band! I was almost in unbelief because the signal was so poor! I found it 6 inches below the sand and mud in probably about 3.5 to 4 feet of water at that point with the current tide. I was so jubilant at that moment! I couldn’t wait to share my happiness with Ryan! My son Danny had just come back from his long walk and I shared my excitement with him at finding the ring! He was thrilled! There were a few others around, including boat instructors for the young children who were there for summer camp who were learning how to sail. They looked over to see what all of the excitement was all about! People along the shore that were hanging out, fishing or just watching their dogs play in the water, came by and shared in my celebration with me finding Ryan’s lost ring!
Within minutes of recovering the ring, Ryan’s SUV was coming into the parking lot and he had no idea what he was about ready to witness. He and his son Sebastian got out of the vehicle and walked towards the beach as I was coming out of the water and that’s when I got to present Ryan’s missing platinum wedding band to him! He was beyond thrilled! I think he may have been in disbelief because he had searched for so long and so had others (including my last attempt), but nothing turned up until this very moment! Ryan could not have been happier! We hugged and I got to meet Sebastian who also joined in the celebration! The ring that had been in the water for over a week could now return to the finger that it belonged to – on Ryan’s hand!
After taking pictures, talking with people that were hanging out along the shore who witnessed the return of the ring, and giving our last goodbyes to Ryan and Sebastian, I packed up the car and headed with my son to Ocean City, Maryland. As we drove away, I was thinking of how wonderful it was to drive towards the East Coast to enjoy our vacation, knowing that we took time out of our lives to help bring some happiness to someone else’s life. Now Ryan could celebrate the return of his beloved ring that had gone missing for some time. It was quite satisfying to me. More than anything, I was proud of my son. I looked over at him, shook his twenty-one year old hand and said, “Thank you Danny for thinking about someone else’s happiness. And because of that, I was able to help someone else get something back that was important to him. You were very kind to give up some of our time for someone else and I will never forget that”. Danny smiled with content as he adjusted his seat back to take a snooze. It was a good beginning to our fun vacation!
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I received a call from Steven Kennedy visiting from Seattle, WA ; who lost his gold and platinum wedding band during a swim in Penobscot Bay at his sister’s summer home in Northport, Maine. I proceeded to the site the following day just prior to low tide and began my dive. After removing some metallic debris from the seabed that hindered the search, I was able to locate the ring which rested covered in about an inch of sand in about 6 feet of water and return it to Steve. A portion of his generous reward will be directed to Literacy Volunteers Mid Coast Maine.
