A recent law enforcement search in Florida put an unusual recovery partner in the spotlight: Splash, a 2-year-old Asian small-clawed otter trained to detect human remains in murky water.<\/p>\n
In a state known for swamps, canals, and blackwater, the fuzzy little detective could help search crews tackle cases that are nearly impossible to work by sight alone.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
Interest in Splash grew after a search for a missing body in Polk County, Florida, where officers brought in trainer Mike Hadsell and his otter to assist. As NPR reported<\/a>, Hadsell has spent decades training rescue dogs and later applied that experience to underwater forensic recovery with Splash.<\/p>\n At his Sarasota County home, Hadsell uses kiddie pools to train the otter. He drops in a canister containing human remains, and Splash learns to locate it \u2014 practice built for water where visibility is poor.<\/p>\n Hadsell said, “90% of the water that I work in when I do forensic recovery is blackwater. I can’t see my hand in front of my face half the time.”<\/p>\n Why does it matter?<\/p>\n In dark or debris-filled water, a trained animal that can detect scent could help recovery teams narrow the search more quickly and safely, potentially reducing the time divers spend sweeping dangerous areas by hand.<\/p>\n NPR reported that Splash has succeeded on nine of his 30 deployments. The species is also a strong fit for the job: Asian small-clawed otters have paws that function a bit like human hands, and they can remain underwater for up to eight minutes.<\/p>\n Hadsell described how Splash signals a find: “He leaves me. All I see is his butt going as he’s heading out, and then he comes back, and he grabs my mask to let me know that he’s found something.”<\/p>\n What are people saying?<\/p>\n In a Facebook video<\/a>, Sheriff Grady Judd holds Splash and says, “And this is the first time in 53 years of law enforcement we’ve ever used a cadaver otter. We’ve used cadaver dogs before. So we’re pretty excited.”<\/p>\n “He’s just like them now,” he said of the otter’s bond with his search dogs. “He’s squeaking and squawking and throwing a fit. He’s just part of the team now.”<\/p>\n Splash’s reward is raw salmon.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent law enforcement search in Florida put an unusual recovery partner in the spotlight: Splash, a 2-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[129507,28,30,29,6893,129506,13512,1911],"class_list":["post-310562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-asian-small-clawed-otter","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-human-remains","tag-mike-hadsell","tag-murky-water","tag-polk-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}