What year did you start Black Water Recovery Divers/bring it to the area? Owner Matthew Hunt: “Black Water Recovery Divers moved to the area from Michigan in June of 2024. The company was founded by my uncle over a decade ago, and I have been with the company since the beginning. I purchased the rights in 2021 and formed Black Water Recovery Divers LLC.”

What are your company’s specialties and why?  Hunt: “The company’s primary focus has shifted from salvage, recovery and inspection to recovery and sales of fossils found here in the great state of North Carolina. We still do salvage, recovery and inspections; however, the primary source of revenue is through retail sales of megalodon teeth.”
 

How and why did you get involved in the diving business?

Hunt: “I knew at a very young age that I wanted to be a recovery diver. I grew up watching my father dive in a marina where we vacationed on Lake Superior in Michigan. When I was 9 years old, he recovered a deck box that fell off a capsized sailboat. Seeing your father walk up the boat ramp in full dive gear carrying a ‘treasure chest’ was a defining moment for me. I became certified as soon as I could at the age of 13. During college, I worked at a dive shop for five years, and during that time, I started doing underwater recoveries. That lead to 18 years volunteering for the sheriff’s department doing body and weapon recovery. In 2020, I came to North Carolina for a weekend trip diving for megalodon teeth and fell in love with it.”
 

What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen while diving?

Hunt: “I would have to say it would be an ice cream truck. There was a film shoot for the movie Bad Haircut where they drove an ice cream truck off a 50-foot cliff, and it landed in the water.  We were called to salvage the wreckage along with the the cameras and a dummy so they could reshoot the scene. The Weather Channel came out and filmed the recovery for season 4, episode 2, of Deep Water Salvage. It was a unique recovery along with an amazing experience.”
 

What do you like about doing business in the area?

Hunt: “I absolutely love the community and all the small businesses. I was welcomed in by several of the captains in the area and was given advice and help with getting the business rolling down here. It made ‘burning the ships’ and coming down here feel like the right choice.”
 

What else would you like people to know about the business?

Hunt: “We are focused providing a positive experience from reuniting people with lost heirlooms to making the gift of giving a ‘meg’ tooth special. We try to film the recovery of each tooth so we can provide the clients with a little more than just an item. Our full inventory can be found in our ‘meg-teeth shop’ on our website, www.bwrdivers.com.”