PENSACOLA, Fla. — Splash, an Asian small-clawed otter, made an appearance in Pensacola on Monday. He performs a job few animals in the world can do. <\/p>\n
Trained for underwater human remains and evidence detection, Splash works with Peace River Search and Rescue — the only organization in the world training otters for this type of mission.<\/p>\n
“We use the dog first, and the dog stays with us and does the alert,” Peace River Search and Rescue Michael Hadsell said. “He tells us where the area is, and then we’ll come back and get in our dive gear, load up the otter, and then we’ll go back out and dive it and find the evidence, or whatever it is we’re looking for down there.”<\/p>\n
“He goes down there, finds it, he comes back and tells us, and then he takes us back down,” he added. <\/p>\n
Splash has been deployed 27 times nationwide, with six confirmed finds.<\/p>\n
“His initial scent training took about two to three months, and then after that it was all conditioning in the environment,” Hadsell said. “Learning how to deploy from the boat, learning how to deploy from the shoreline, whether I was in the water with him or I was just not going to go in the water with him and deploy him from the shoreline.”<\/p>\n
He was in Pensacola on Monday morning, assisting in the search for missing 37-year-old woman Robin Whitmire. Police searched near the Mahogany Mill boat ramp after receiving a lead.<\/p>\n