As far as profession modifications go, leaving your job as a law enforcement officer to end up being a golf ball scuba diver is quite unforeseeable.
John Colenutt served in the Metropolitan Police for 15 years prior to beginning his business, GolfBalls4You.
And on extremely hectic days the 44-year-old and his group can obtain as much as 12,000 balls.
John, from Bexley in London, services around 70 golf courses throughout England and Wales, recuperating tonnes of balls which have actually wound up in ponds, rivers and lakes.
John utilized to offer pre-owned golf balls on eBay while he was was operating at a driving variety as a trainee in the 1990s.
Hundreds of balls would be discarded due to the fact that they weren’t the club’s home brand name – so rather he offered them online, asking £20 for 100 balls.
After taking a profession break from the Met in 2015 he reignited his pastime and trained to scuba dive in Spain.
However diving for golf balls in the UK is worlds apart from diving in the Mediterranean.
John and his group typically need to smash through ice throughout the cold weather, can hardly see undersea, and need to handle poisonous snakes, inbound golf balls, and aggressive fish.
He explained: ‘I still manage to play golf once in a while – stick some balls in the water, which I know I’ll return in a couple of months’ time.
‘The best day we’ve ever had was around 12,000 balls, however that was a remarkable day.
‘We also once collected 28,500 balls in three days, which is just under two tonnes of balls.
‘If every job was like that, I would be a rich man.’
GolfBalls4U obtains balls, cleans them up, and after that resells them for a portion of their normal rate.
But while obtaining golf balls may sound relatively simple, it’s no mean accomplishment, as the scuba divers need to gather them by hand to prevent harming the riverbed or lake bottom.
John, who resides in Sussex with his spouse and 10-year-old child Milly said: ‘You have to feel your way along the bottom because there’s generally no presence – you can’t see anything.
‘We have these net bags which look like lobster pots and can hold around 20 kilos.
‘We often find clubs when someone has a bad putt or chip and then lobs it into the pond.
‘We also find phones, glasses, flags, golf buggies and lots of brollies.
‘You could say that my business benefits from bad golfers in two respects, because it’s where I get my balls from, and after that I offer the balls back to them.’
The scuba divers likewise have severe temperature levels to compete with – often breaking through ice throughout the cold weather, or dealing with heavy bags of balls and set throughout the summertime.
And the residents aren’t constantly friendly.
‘We often have to break ice and the water is close to or below zero – that’s a brief working day,’ John said.
‘We are wearing 35 to 45 kilos of kit and our bags weigh another 20 plus kilos.
‘Sometimes you’re in 40-degree heat in a black dry match, waist deep in mud, silt and weeds.
‘Adders are quite common and they are not scared of us.
‘If you see one swimming around, best get out of the pond and leave it to enjoy its swim.
‘You also have giant carp which are used to being fed, so they swim right up and whack you right in the face – scares the life out of you.’
Some of the ponds John and his group check out might not have actually been cleared in twenty years – which can have major ecological effects.
In those cases, with scuba divers ‘knee deep in golf balls’, most of the balls can’t be recycled and are for that reason recycled, as John attempts to have as little effect on the environment as possible.
‘When I’m working, I’ll have golf enthusiasts come near me and state ‘oh you drew the short straw’ or ‘that’s a dreadful job’, however I’ve had far even worse jobs,’ John said.
Get in touch with our news group by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, inspect our news page.