Southeast Louisiana Underwater Search and Recovery 501c3

06/08/2026

It’s gonna be a busy summer for sure.

The search will continue tomorrow.

06/07/2026

My thoughts and prayers go out to this young man’s family.

This never gets easier but his loved ones didn’t have to wait long and they can mourn him knowing he isn’t lost somewhere.

For those who wonder about the river and weather, here is the true assessment.

The river was a little high but not bad. I was able to easily dive. The weather was nothing like here in Slidell. Some sprinkles and a few quick downpours were all that occurred. There were a lot of folks having a nice time there.

The reason for this sad incident was not about tubing, weather or the river. It cannot be undone and I will leave it at that.

To the folks from Washington Parish Fire and Washington Parish Sheriff's Office, your support made this operation successful, and I cannot say enough about that. The public is fortunate to have you when these things happen.

Sometimes these searches aren’t emotionally tough but this one is a little difficult. He was a very young man. Knowing the loss of a child makes this one tough for me.

Please keep this family in your prayers

UPDATE:

The remains of Jonis Warren, 18, of St. Tammany Parish, were recovered and received by the coroner.

Thank you to Mark Michaud with Southeast Louisiana Underwater Search and Recovery, Northshore Ambulance EMTs and District Six and Eight Fire Department volunteers for assisting in search efforts.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family and friends.

ORIGINAL:

At 1:44 p.m., our communications section received a 911 call stating that someone, while tubing on the Bogue Chitto River, went under the water and did not resurface.

Our deputies, volunteers from the District Six and Eight Fire Department and EMTs from Northshore Ambulance responded along with a diver with sonar equipment.

The search remains active for the St. Tammany Parish resident and the family has been notified.

Additional information will be released as it becomes available. We appreciate the public's patience and cooperation.

06/04/2026

The Phone that Really Mattered

In early July 2014, my phone rang. Of course it did. Isn’t this how all of these stories begin? Well, this is no different. Well, maybe this one is.

When I picked up the call, Shirley Kasser was on the other end. Shirley is a friend who is a cave diver, scuba instructor and she grew up in Mississippi. She lives in Florida now. Like me, Shirley lost a son. Her son, Cameron, was a Marine and lived in Mississippi when he passed from a vehicle crash.

Shirley and I dived the Florida caves together for several years with a few others. Forrest Wilson and Mark “Slim” Leonard (Rip) would meet Shirley and me and we would dive the caves of the local rivers and the Millpond in Marianna Florida. I would drag my boat over and for two or three days we would explore.

Shirley also, for a time taught wounded veterans to scuba dive. Forrest was one of the early cave divers. He developed a tool that is used today called a cave arrow. It is a directional arrow that is placed on permanent lines in underwater caves to mark distances, the closest exit and when two lines that are not connected, are connected to access a different tunnel. This invention has kept cave divers safe for decades. Forrest looked like Uncle Si. Slim was from Missouri. Slim was a giant of a man. He loved the underwater caves there and was widely known as an instructor and overall good guy. He invented a prototype rebreather / extender that was later marketed in mainstream diving. This thing looked like a urinal with all of the pvc pipe and fittings from his local Lowes. It worked and we were there during the testing of this invention. Sadly, Mark passed on my birthday one year. He is missed.

Now, back to the story. My phone rang and it was Shirley on the other end. She asked how far Ellisville Ms was from me. I told her an hour or two and asked why. Shirley explained a longtime friend called and told her a man needed help locating a phone in a farm pond where he had been fishing.

I told Shirley that wouldn’t be something I wanted to do as the cost would be more than the phone was worth. Shirley kept talking and told me to cool my jets as she has a story to add to this request.

Enter Josh Ishee. Josh is a carpenter by trade. At the time this took place he was teaching carpentry at the local vocational school near his home. Josh and his wife had a daughter. When she was born there were serious health issues. When she was two years old this baby succumbed to those health issues. Here is where the story really begins.

Josh loves to fish. In fact it was real therapy for him after his daughter passed. He and a friend fished a particular farm pond pretty regularly. It was a pretty good sized pond and it seems the fishing was good. While fishing this pond Josh leaned over and his phone went into the water. You may ask, does he have insurance on the phone? While this story was being told to me I thought the same thing.

Well, that wouldn’t matter. What was on that phone is what really mattered. Every photo he had of his daughter was on that phone. Josh had not backed it to Icloud or ITunes. He had no way of recovering the pictures. This kinda made a terrible loss even worse.

I can tell you, pictures are so important. Take all you can and save them in as many ways as you can. When Hurricane Katrina struck, I lost several photo albums and two scrapbooks in the floods. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t even remember what pictures I lost. I still can’t so that means memories are also lost forever.

Josh and his friend jumped overboard and searched for the phone. The pond was around five feet deep. After a while he gave up. Unable to find it he went home heartbroken. He reached out to several folks in search of a diver but none were to be found locally.

That’s where Shirley and I came in. She has a friend, in Josh’s area, who is an attorney. This friend is also a friend of Josh. She knew Shirley was a diver, but at the time Shirley lived in central Florida. “Can you come and help or do you know someone who might?” This brings us back to when Shirley called me. After she told me this story I sure enough cooled my jets and knew this was something I had to do. Perception is reality and my perspective changed a lot after listening to Shirley.

I made a call to the attorney and then to Josh. Soon I was on my way to the middle of nowhere. This place was void of civilization and people were few. There wasn’t even a flashing light where we ended up.

As good fortune would have it, I didn’t hear any banjos nor did I come into contact with anyone who thought I had a pretty mouth. Like the story in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid goes, “So far so good”. I didn’t know where we were but Josh did. It ended up that was good enough.

We arrived at the location. Sure enough there was a large pond. We unloaded my gear and my metal detector and got into a small boat. Josh looked around and seemed a little confused for a few minutes. We moved around a bit and finally he told me “It is right here”. I eased out of the boat and into the water. It hit me at my chin when my feet touched bottom. Josh handed me the metal detector and I got started.

I thought to myself, the drive was longer than this search is gonna take. Right. Yep. Ok. Well, it turned out my metal detector wasn’t a magic wand. Oh, it worked fine but it wasn’t telling me, “it’s right there”. After about 15 minutes I handed him the metal detector and went to the bottom. I worked a search using a cave reel and a stake. After another 45 minutes I came up empty. At this point I was getting concerned. This was a large pond and after an hour I had nothing.

I took a break and asked if he was sure about this spot. Well, as he sat on the boat, while I searched the bottom, he realized he wasn’t sure. This was a hot spot where they catch as lot of fish but he was thinking this may not be the place. I asked a few more questions about that day. When it was all said and done Josh realized this had been very upsetting and he wasn’t sure exactly where he was when the phone went under.

Josh told me his fishing partner would be there in another hour or so and he would know for sure. I asked Josh to pick another spot where he felt the phone may be. He did and we moved there. After another hour or so, using the same search tools and patterns, no phone was found.

I could see the look of sadness on his face. There may have even been a little despair as time takes a toll on our mind. We took a break while I changed tanks and drank some water. Josh looked at me and then told me he was sure when we got here but now he has no confidence as to where they were when the phone fell into the water. A little while later his friend arrived. Things were about to change for the better.

Introductions were made and I ran the day’s events down to him. He look at Josh and then back at me. Josh was pretty bummed out by now.

Old boy looked at me and said, “get in the boat”. I did and we headed back out. With a big smile on his face he told me, “Y’all weren’t even close to where we were fishing”.

That was music to my ears. We sure enough went somewhere else. Now what I haven’t mentioned is there were patches of “stalk-like things” sticking out of the water. The pond kind of looked the same no matter where we were. As we pulled up to this patch, Josh shouted, “Yeah, this is where we were!” He realized the horizon looked right as he looked out. I felt better but I wasn’t convinced as my pride was stinging a bit. Two attempts and two hours wore on me.

I put my gear and fins on and stepped out of the boat. I took about two steps, while I prepped my gear and mask to drop below the surface. On about step two, I stepped I stepped on the phone, or at least what felt like it could be a phone. I put the regulator in my mouth and squatted down until I could reach the object under my fin.

Bingo! I hit pay dirt. I came up with the phone in my hand and a huge smile on my face. Hot Damn!!!! Got it!

Josh looked at it and started crying. I started crying. Hell, we all cried a bit. I handed him the phone and they helped me into the boat. We headed to the shore by the trucks.

When we got there I rinsed the mud from the phone and cleaned it up a bit before I got out of my gear. The IPhone was in a lifeproof case. That’s good. The phone had been there for several days but the screen wasn’t lit. That’s bad.

I think about the skit in Hee-Haw in the barber shop called that’s good / that’s bad. Being an Iphone there was no sd card to store the photos. That’s bad. We had the phone, that’s good. We still didn’t know if he would recover the only photos he had of his late baby girl. That’s bad.

There were a lot of mixed emotions at that moment for sure. I cleaned up, we took a few pictures with my phone and with a “Good luck and I hope this all works out” I headed back to Slidell.

That evening I was at Cracker Barrel eating dinner, with Kaitlin, Kaleigh and Autumn, when a text came across my phone. A picture of the active phone and the words “It works!” displayed.

Holy Smokes! How awesome was that. He followed it up with, “Thank you so much Mark. I mean that. From the bottom of my heart, thank you”.

Tears rolled out of my eyes. I turned the phone to Kaitlin as happy tears rolled down my face. What a great thing this was. Today was a much better day than yesterday for sure now wasn’t it.

Sometimes these things are so much more important than just the value of a phone or any other object.

Take the pictures. Take a lot of them. They are our return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.

05/25/2026

05/23/2026

In early 1996 I was called to locate a vehicle in the water. When I look back, this is where it all began. I wouldn't realize this until much later. I am going to add some stories here that I have been posting on my personal page. I hope you enjoy them.

Chicken Drop Chevy

This story is dedicated to Gary Shirlls. He and his company broke me in to the vehicle recovery business. He is missed. As luck would have it, his old International is still in service today. Thanks for the pic Amy West.

Back in the olden days, you know, the ones before life changed around here, there was a legendary place called the Chicken Drop. The place was officially the Salt Bayou Lounge but no one really called it that.

Long before Hurricane Katrina changed our lives and the entire landscape this bar was the thing legends are made of. People would come and drink, visit, listen to music and bet on the “Chicken Drop”.

The Chicken Drop you say, what is that? Well I’ll tell you. In this bar was a board, which was the floor, with numbers on it for patrons to choose. What was the choice you ask? Well, you placed a bet and you would win if you guessed which number the chicken would p**p on. Yeah, the bar also had a pet chicken. The Gomez’s had a long run with this place. Today the memories still live on.

This is where this week’s story begins, well sort of.

In the early morning hours of Feb 24, 1996, while sleeping soundly in my big comfortable bed, my phone rang.

Gary Schirlls, of Gary’s Towing and Recovery, was on the other end. Gary and I had been friends for a long time. I was still trying to wake up and get the cobwebs out when Gary started yelling, “come on man, wake up, I need you to go swimming.”

I was caught way off guard because Gary sounded like he was at a party. I thought to myself, “really Gary?, It’s way too early o’clock in the morning for this”.

I finally came to enough to ask what he needed. Gary told me to get my dive gear and meet him by the Chicken Drop (Salt Bayou Lounge). There was a truck in the bayou and he needed me to find it and get it hooked up so he could pull it out and go back to bed.

My eyes were wide awake now. This was so cool. I am gonna get paid to dive. Heck yeah! This was the first time I ever got paid to dive. This was to be the beginning of what was to come. It has lasted almost 3 decades now.

I called my friend Shelby Russell and he too was soon on his way. I walked out of the door to discover it was raining like the devil. It was really cold too. I didn’t care. I was young, excited, and ready for this as I had logged a lot of dives by then in less than pristine waters. I arrived there quickly and Shelby made it a short time later.

Gary and Brian (I think his last name was Galatas), his other driver at the time, briefed me on what had happened as they stood by their two tow trucks.

According to what they had been told, by other patrons, a man came out of the lounge and went to his new 1997 extended cab Chevy pickup. The Chevy was parked on the little hill, near the boat launch. We all know there are no real hills there so this amounted to a big pile of dirt that grass had grown on. The guy had parked on it when he came to the bar. You know, like a Chevy commercial.

The best Gary could get was the driver could not get it to start and he got mad. He might have been drinking a little that night too. According to witnesses, the guy was mad and he got out of the truck. What happened next was just crazy. He walked behind the truck, pushed it and it went into the canal.

The truck hit the water and floated toward the lake, slowly sinking, until it was totally submerged while he and everyone else watched. The guy was still ranting about the truck not starting. Ok Then. I guess he fixed the problem after all, I thought to myself.

Shelby and I geared up and entered the water in search of the truck. Holy Smokes! That water was cold and we couldn’t see a thing beneath the surface. It was really dark out there too. We went back and forth from one side to the other working toward the lake. We didn’t know the dynamics of water related searches other than the few we learned in our dive classes. We went under and felt around a bit.

After about fifty feet or so it wasn’t working so we went to the surface to change our battle plan. This did not seem to be working because we did not think the truck could have floated that far. Like I said, we hadn’t done this before and we were really green.

As we were floating on the surface we realized we were headed toward the lake. The tide was now going out and we were going with it. It wasn’t too strong but it was moving. “Nice, what now?”, I thought.

As luck, and not skill, would have it I found my first submerged vehicle from the surface. Yeah, it wasn’t by tried and true underwater recovery techniques. It was plain old dumb luck. As we floated toward the lake my fins bumped into the top of the cab. I thought to myself “would you looky here”.

I dropped down and found it was indeed the truck, at least it felt like a truck. I was pretty sure it was a truck. I went down and tied my rope off and then surfaced holding the rope. Yep, it was a truck.

Shelby went for the shore, with the rest of the rope, so Gary and Brian could “shoot the hook” to me. I pulled the rope as I stood on the truck. In short order the cable and hook made it to me.

I dropped back down and hooked the truck by the axle. I surfaced and cleared out of the way so Gary could work. The cable tightened and soon the truck was moving. A short time later the truck was, once again, on dry land.

After the truck was on dry land the rest of the story was told. Old Boy bought a standard transmission pickup. He was not “normal” and forgot to push the clutch to the floor so the truck would start. Well, you know what happened next.

A few hours after the phone call had awakened me I was back home, and asleep. I was also a few dollars better off. If you are wondering…..yeah I showered before I went back to bed.

I also found that even though most locals will tell you “That canal is 40’ deep”, about any waterway you ask, most around here are only 8’ to 20’.

Another lesson I learned is this: if my car won’t start I’ll call a tow truck BEFORE it ends up in the water.

05/16/2026

A properly fitted and secured life jacket could mean the difference between living or drowning as well as leaving your family to wonder why you didn't.

Just because you can swim isn't a good reason to not wear your PFD when on the water.

Parents, what is your practiced plan if you, or your child / children go overboard? If they are wearing one and you are not, there is a good chance they will be orphaned. Wear you PFD, have a plan and practice the plan until everyone knows what to do and what to expect.

Whether at the beach, the river, a lake or on a boat be ready to act and be safe.

05/13/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CFCdYCdm1/?mibextid=wwXIfr

02/02/2026

Surface Supplied Air Training today.

Instructors:
Dr Dan Godbey
Oscar “Bigeaux” Williams

EBRSO
East Side Fire
St George Fire
Central Fire
Baton Rouge EMS
SELAUSAR

“We Train Together So We Can Work Together”

01/06/2026

The water is officially cold here on the Gulf Coast. Water Temps are 50's inland and 60ish offshore.

Properly fitted and secured PFD's are very important. You may say I am a good swimmer. Cold water doesn't care.

You may have your kids in one, but you don't. What if they go over and you have to go in. What is your plan? Do you even have one?

Watch this video and then prepare yourself for the worst if it happens.

Cold Water Bootcamp

Volunteers experience the 3 effects of cold water immersion - cold shock, cold incapacitation & hypothermia. Learn how to survive a fall into cold water.