DARKWATER USAR

October 22 2019 we heard some talk about a young man that had gone missing in Lk minniewanka, near Banff Alberta.We were volunteers with the Central Alberta Rescue Divers Society, and expected to get the call if the search moved to the water. October 28th we got the call, but due to detremental weather conditions I was the only diver that could respond, Chritine (my wife, and search partner) offered to book me a campsite and I made the 6hr drive to Banff, driving through sleet and snow.

This began a 2 and 1/2 yearlong search for Yannick Bastien, in 300ft water, with stumps, cliffs and rocks littering the bottom.

This is when I first saw sonar being used, it was a small hull mounted humminbird unit,and it did a great job of finding targets in 50ft of water. I knew at this time that this was the answer to finding drowning victims.

With great help from many people I started my quest to make this little humminbird unit work in the deep water. With the first handmade towfish, and 100m of cable, all hand deployed,to a 500ft cable with a 12volt winch system, and a tested machined towfish, it almost became an obsessionwith many hours of testing and failed attempts.

I made many mistakes, and went back to the drawing board many times, but finally I had a system that was working very well. And on a sunny most beautiful afternoon, an image appeared on my sonar screen. this was not the first target that we had to dive the ROV on. The other targets, although measuring correctly, ended up being logs. There was something about this one, it would be another couple weeks before I could send down my ROV to see if this could be him.

We managed to get some more time of work and headed to banff to have a look at this target and get some more searching done. We unloaded the boat, set the coordinates of the target, on my helix 15, and headed over to the spot. about a 7km boat ride through some of the most beautiful country this provice has to offer. Christine managed the ROV tether and I started the dive. We had bouyed the target and confirmed ,with another sonar pass, that the target was close to the bouy line. The Rov took forever to cover the 125ft to bottom, the algea suspended in the water looking like space travel. The LED lights iluminated about 15ft ahead and about 10ft below the ROV. Just at the edge of the lights, coming into veiw, was a body. Finally the search was over, the sonar was built and it was time to move on.

This was the first of many searches that the towfish and winch system were involved in. We still search for the missing, and are involved with many teams, and resources across north america,The system made such a big difference in our searches, I want to make this affordable system available to teams across north america.

Stuart & Christine Pole