Paul and Manuel Maendel Heart Team members of the Oak Bluff Hutterite Colony east of Morris, MB recently attended a trade show selling sonar and dive assist equipment and advanced technology.
The next part has to do with the cost of equipment, travel, accommodation, meals, and other costs as part of the recovery expenses, training, and equipment purchases and body recovery techniques.
The evolution of body recovery in water has come a long way in the last couple of years.
“Just ten years ago, all you had was drag hooks through the water. And that’s what a lot of people still do when they’re desperate. You get out in a boat, you drag. Then there are the RCMP dive teams, who in Manitoba do everything outside of Winnipeg,” said Paul.
Paul described a situation in Alberta, where a 17-year-old Hutterite drowned. They dove a lot there unsuccessfully, but realized, “You know what? It’s not just about doing blanket searches. Because this could take weeks to do it.”
“We covered such a small area, point of entry. We need sonar equipment.”
Every other professional dive team had high-quality sonar equipment so off to a show in New Orleans, called Underwater Interventions, where they sold not only recreational dive stuff, but professional equipment.
“Boy, did we have sticker shock? Everything’s five or six times more expensive – Two zeros more than we could imagine,” said Paul. “Diving is old, but there are new technologies for locating bodies underwater with technology, with sensors and sonar. That is the way of the future. We started researching and found it to be so expensive. It’s like just a head-scratcher. How do you go about fundraising $160,000 for an entry-level ROV?”

A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is an unoccupied underwater robot connected to a water vehicle by a series of cables. These cables transmit command and control signals between the operator and the ROV, allowing remote navigation of the vehicle.
The Heart Team operates with and from charitable donations, so the next move was a mail-out to all the colonies. There are 500 colonies. If each one gives $200 bucks, it’s a matter of awareness and getting people on board.
“A lot of colonies are supportive, but a lot of doubters, too, but I can’t spend too much time convincing people who don’t want to buy into the program. You have to see the need for it,” he said. “In the last two years, we’ve come a long way. We found out how valuable the ROV is after two recoveries in the Winnipeg River.”
Manuel runs the technology, and Paul communicates.
“I run the technology, fly the ROV, run the sonar and practice with sonar constantly, and the technology mesmerizes me,” said Manuel.
To help identify the fundraising needs of continuing to build and expand their knowledge and recovery abilities, here are the two most essential pieces of recovering pieces, sonar and the Pro 5 ROV. In a recent search event, they arrived on the scene, the team deployed the side-scan sonar first, but a storm stopped their search. The next day, they resumed the search with both the sonar and Pro 5 to locate and help recover the victim’s body.
Both units connect via the control box, the computer, and the joystick, which he uses to fly the ROV. The computer plugs into a little Honda generator and powers the whole operation is waterproof, shockproof, very durable, and the boat moves at five km an hour for the sonar to scan attached to the boat.
Funding, raising funds, and administration are vital for this Heart Team service mission to function correctly because they never charge for their service and don’t expect the grieving families to do so.
In some cases, for example, their boat has decals of the companies that donated to help buy the boat.
All the monies and funding go through the Oak Bluff Colony’s Charitable Trust, and Paul and Manuel have full authority to allocate and spend money for Heart Team as they see fit.
Donations can be made via cheque to Oak Bluff Charitable Trust or via PayPal to HEARTeamMB@gmail.com
“We use those monies for purchasing equipment, whatever we deem we need. So we don’t have to go through a lot of bureaucracy,” said Manuel. •
— By Harry Siemens
Photos below courtesy of HEART  team.