The relationships the Dive Recovery Team has forged over the past several years has allowed us to work with some of the most state of the art equipment in the world, and has allowed us to develop our own unique methodology .

Depending on the accuracy of the information received from research efforts, search area size, and even in-water visibility, different locating methods or combinations of methods need to be used.

For example, when the archival research has provided a realistic search area, typically side scan sonar is used to hunt for potential targets (if the search area is quite big, a magnetometer is sometimes used to help narrow the search area simply because large amounts of area can be quickly covered). When a list of potential target is established using side scan sonar and GPS , each target is visited where an echo-sounder and GPS is used to further pinpoint the target. Depending on the depth and visibility of the target, divers may enter the water to conduct a search using the XIOS system, however, if the depth is to great and/or the visibility is too poor, an ROV may be used. If it is suspected that the target may be buried under sediment, the sub-bottom profiler can then be used to see into the floor of the body of water.

Every search area, target, and target condition/location is different requiring a different approach each time.