They can get pretty big.................
Posted on 06/25/2026 5:42:24 AM PDT by Twotone
Paired with an abundance of visitors and boating opportunities, Lake Mead in Nevada is one of America’s deadliest national park sites. Now, as the peak summer season kicks into high gear, the National Park Service (NPS) has suspended its recovery dive team responsible for recovering the bodies of drowning victims.
On May 14, NPS Park Dive Officer Sergeant Ryan McCrea announced in an email that Lake Mead dive operations would be put on hiatus, effective immediately, due to staffing shortages and the need for more equipment and training.
“The park temporarily stood down its dive team to ensure safe operations while personnel complete required training and certifications,” an NPS spokesperson told Outside. “The decision was based on operational safety requirements and the availability of certified dive team personnel to perform this specialized function.”
Lake Mead is one of the deadliest NPS sites in the country, accounting for roughly seven percent of all national park deaths over the last decade. It’s also one of the most popular sites; in 2025, more than six million people visited Lake Mead. That same year, the recreation area recorded 18 deaths—more than any NPS site. High fatalities at the desert lake are driven by a mix of busy boating, sudden weather shifts, open-water swimming, and extreme heat. One of the park’s dive team’s key responsibilities is recovering the bodies of drowning victims.
(Excerpt) Read more at outsideonline.com ...
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They make it sound like it’s the Bermuda Triangle of lakes.
No, an entire dive team was not wiped out by some unknown/undiscovered means; and they're not missing and presumed dead.
The dive-team function has been suspended and they've essentially been laid-off.
As Twotone indicated, the headline is merely a hook, completely untruthful in the way it was written.
Is the dive team ever saving peoples lives? I am hard pressed to believe this is a routine occurrence.. body recovery perhaps, but actually saving someones lives?
If it doesn’t have a proven history of saving lives, what is the fact its a deadly place have any bearing on the dive team existing or not?
I thought they were going to tell that old lie about divers coming back out saying they would not go back cause there were catfish down there big enough to eat a man.
I’ve heard that one all up and down the East coast, and even Jeremy Wade claimed it on TV.
The way I read the headline, that Dastardly Trump Administration simply got rid of the dive team, so essential to this park. No, they’re trying to fix a problem
A pox on the writer & editor.
I’m spoiled: I grew up on and still live near the great lakes. I see articles about “lakes” and I have to question the use of that term. Some people insist on calling some benighted mud hole a “lake” that is actually a retaining pond with an attitude. And as lake Mead virtually disappeared a few years back I have to be skeptical.
CC
You’re mostly right, but no, the dive team has not been laid off. They are looking for more qualified personnel and doing more training. It’s right in the article. These are government employees. No one gets laid off.
Lake Mead never, “virtually disappeared,” and even though it is artificial it is a MASSIVE natural lake even when it is at it’s recent low. I grew up in Michigan and the Great Lakes are more properly understood an inland seas. When you can’t see the other shore...
They can get pretty big.................
Superior, Huron, and Michigan are 3 of the 5 largest lakes in the world. And connected. Taken together, they are 5 of the largest 13 lakes in the world.
Saying a lake isn’t a lake if it’s not comparable to a Great Lake is stretching it a little.
At it’s smallest, Lake Mead was still over 200 square miles. It’s not a Great Lake to be sure, but 20 square miles isn’t REMOTELY tiny.
Lake Mead is not “deadly”.
Lake Mead seems to a attract more than its share of people who lack training for the pleasure boating that is enjoyed there as well as, likely, more than its share of drunken boaters, ending with more than its share of drowning victims.
The “journalists” write in a manner that says “Lake Mean is deadly, don’t go there”. That’s a stupid way to put it.
And the Dive Team at Lake Mead did not just disappear. After writing that in the headline the article when on to correctly report why the park’s Dive Team activity has been suspended. Stupid “journalism”.
They have been finding certain “items” in the bottom of Mead as the water level drops. What goes on in Vegas often ends up at the bottom of Lake Mead.
That was the claim for the Bottomless State Park in New Mexico back in 1959.. Also a claim drowned victims at Bottom Less Lakes were found later in ponds underground in Carlsbad Caverns.
The safest and least expensive method of body recovery could be the old fashion method of dragging lakes with hooks.
By the time a dive team is assembled & reaches the scene to commence operations... It’s a recovery operation and assumed to be a potential crime scene. Used to do this stuff for the PA State Police.
You don’t want to drag... At least that was our rule in PA. Bodies will eventually float if not recovered by divers (except in some except colder water temps). Dragging can puncture the bodies and so prevent bloating and eventual floating. The body is a gas bag once decomposition begins. If you know the water temp at depth, you can almost set a watch as to when a body will float.
In the 60’s a diver went down to inspect the dam at Conchas Lake.
He came up and said he saw a catfish the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Said he wouldn’t go back down.
In the Kentucky river, when my dad was a boy in the 20’s men would doodlesock, put their hands into crevices under rocks, the catfish would clamp down and they would pull them out. There was a ledge at a bend in the river and several men were drowned by a huge catfish. They dynamited the crevice and the catfish was so large its head was up against the seat back of a wagon and its tail dragged the ground. He had a picture of it. Don’t know what happened to it.
as far as the body count goes... isnt Lake Mead near Vegas? that would be a great body dump for the Mobsters wouldnt it?
LOL — thanks for the clarification. I was picturing an ill-fated dive team laid out on the lakebed!
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