Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
It's not just the horizontal distance. Water searches have a three-dimensionality that can
make it difficult, if not impossible, to find bodies, even using the latest technology and divers.
Depending on electronics is bound to disappoint. Side sonar can help, but if you've got a
search area as large as a reservoir, a body can be a needle in a haystack of objects at the bot-
tom: boulders, logs, bushes, snags. Or a body can be suspended between the bottom and the
surface because of temperature gradients and currents. People who do recoveries in cold wa-
ter say that if the person went in alive, he can curl up in a fetal position and end up on the
bottom, camouflaged as a large rock. The best side-sonar scanner in the world won't help dis-
tinguish that rounded shape from the others.
There are drownings with fluid in the lungs and cases when the person is dead before
going into the water, whether by accident or murder. Victims who are dead before entering
the water, or get only a bit of water in their lungs, tend not to sink. Each factor affects the
disposition of the body and whether it floats or sinks; it also matters whether and what the
person has eaten before going into the water, and whether the person was weighted down
with concrete, wrapped in a tarp, or wearing hip waders.
Then there's alcohol. Whether or not it played a role in the first place, and it often does, it
definitely plays a role once someone is dead. Beer bloats. “If there's beer on board, refloat time
could be a lot quicker,” Lisa Higgins told handlers. In Louisiana, Lisa also considers whether
there's a Creole influence in the mix: Red beans and rice speed float time.
Serious water cadaver-dog handlers carry around a “body float” chart; many of them know
it by heart. It provides information on water temperature and estimated days-to-float time,
along with variables like body composition.
Water cadaver training works just like land cadaver—finding the strongest source of scent.
Then it gets hard. At first it's canine torture, like tying a dog's feet together and then com-
manding him, “Go find!” The dog doesn't get to run around and climb over obstacles to find
scent. Instead, he's trapped in the boat, which has become his legs, and he's forced to com-
municate with scent illiterates to make those legs move anywhere.
“We're taking a lot of things away from them,” Lisa Higgins warned handlers during one
lecture. “We're taking away their ability to run the scent cone with their own four legs. Now
they are dependent on us.”
Water search was taking patience away from me. Solo and I were not the perfect pupils.
Neither of us fully understood the concept of what we were doing on water. Training a couple
of times a week on water wasn't possible. We'd already been out in a boat with Nancy a num-
ber of times. It was trigonometry to me, trying to understand the currents, the wind, the
scent cone, the boat chugging in a zigzag across the water. For Solo, water work was hyper-
bolic geometry. It takes patience and nerve strength on the dog's part. Solo has a great deal of
drive and good nerve strength, but less patience.
