From the ‘burbs of Milwaukee, Chicago to Wisconsin’s Northwoods
Jeopardy! champ pays it forward
September 8, 2025
WISCONSIN – Ed Bieber – also known as “Ed the Diver” – said he has turned his love of underwater diving into a full-time business.
Bieber, along with his fiancée, Christie Barlament, operates Bieber’s Underwater Recovery based in Northeast Wisconsin.
Bieber – who was born in Marinette and grew up on a farm in Lena – said he began his diving recovery business several years ago, armed with a cheap diving mask, swim trunks, a boogie board and some old gym shoes.
“Most of my early dives were near Stephenson Island in Marinette, and it has just progressed from there into more of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota,” he said.
Today, Bieber said in addition to volunteering for clean-ups, he runs Bieber’s Underwater Recovery – a business specializing in paid searches for lost personal items.
He said he also takes part in speaking engagements, hosts meet-and-greets, advertises on his truck and produces videos to help local businesses thrive.
Bieber said if someone can swim, boat or fish in a body of water, then they can also dive in it.
“There are private lakes or different communities that have lake associations where you have to get permission from someone or go through a board [to get approval], but with the majority of waterways, you can just hop in the water and start going,” he said.
Diving for fishing lures
When he first started diving, Bieber said it was initially to find fishing lures he and his kids had lost over the years.
“Of course, I found everybody else’s lures, too,” he laughed. “I started collecting them and began organizing them by type and color. My family and friends encouraged me to start selling them, so after collecting several hundred lures, I turned what I had found into a side business. After that, people started asking me to recover their lost property.”
At the time, Bieber said he had a full-time job and dived on the weekends.
“Once I started selling some [of the lures], I started buying new [diving] gear – gloves, wetsuit, a nice mask and a GoPro,” he said. “I started making videos, and when I realized how much people love watching underwater footage, I got scuba-certified [so] I could breathe underwater and be safer. It just blew up from there.”
Bieber said he became scuba-certified (PADI) in late 2020 through M&M Diving in Menominee, Michigan – a certification that has proven essential for his work near dams and shallow-water cleanups, where a scuba tank is “absolutely necessary.”
“With having a scuba tank, you don’t have to worry about getting hooked underwater,” he said. “If you’re just holding your breath and you’re under there and get hooked and can’t get out, you’re in trouble. I have all the tools right on me when I’m in the water.”
Barlament said she is also going through her scuba certification.
“I had no underwater experience until I met Ed,” she said. “The scariest thing for me so far was probably swimming right next to a sturgeon that swam right past my face. There is always a fear of [finding] snapping turtles or a beaver [when diving], but that sturgeon scared the [heck] out of me.”
Barlament said diving is “very exhilarating” for her.
“I never had any desire or knew anything about it until I met Ed,” she said. “I’m definitely addicted to it. It’s cool when you’re down there and you see an old bottle or a pair of sunglasses – something that doesn’t belong there. It’s fun to collect everything, because you never know what treasures you might find.”
Cleaning up the waterways
With each dive, Bieber said he found not only what people had lost, but also what others had left behind.
“I felt bad seeing cans, plastic, bicycles, tires and a bunch of other stuff [in the water],” he said. “As a result, I started pulling trash out of the water on my dives, too.”
Bieber and Barlament said “the junk doesn’t stop there.”
“You can only imagine the junk we’ve seen and pulled from waterways – washing machines, toilets, treadmills, microwaves, refrigerators, aluminum cans, cast iron tubs, wallets, bottles, etc.,” Barlament said. “We really take a lot of pride in not just taking all the treasures, but taking all the trash we can.”
Due to the nature of some of the trash, however, the diving duo said they can’t haul out all the garbage they find.
“We’re trying our best to pull out all the garbage and remove it, but it’s hard to remove a chunk of concrete and the rebar because of its weight,” Bieber said. “With the microwave, it’s sad to think about how that probably played out. Somebody had an old microwave to get rid of, and they just dumped it over the bridge into the water.”
Bieber said he spent about 15 minutes trying to wrangle the microwave into the kayak they use for hauling, but it just wouldn’t budge.
“It was so jam-packed full of sand on the inside,” he said. “Besides opening the door and getting all the mud out, I couldn’t lift it, so it’s still there. There is also a treadmill in the Peshtigo River. A fella and I tried to get it out a few years ago, but we couldn’t.”
In the spring, when currents run stronger, the couple said items on the riverbed are usually cleaner and easier to spot.
“As the year goes on, everything settles a bit,” Bieber said. “You can still see stuff, but sometimes things are halfway buried. Different bodies of water have more or less muck – that’s why I also use metal detectors to help. That helps when looking for lost keys, rings, phones, etc.”
In collaboration with Brown County Parks, Bieber participated in a scheduled dive at Pamperin Park’s quarry.
With a disc golf course bordering the water, he said it’s a common spot for lost discs.
“In addition to finding a refrigerator, multiple bikes and a safe down there, we pulled a grand total of 280 discs from the quarry,” he said. “If the discs had names and numbers on them, we tried to return them to their rightful owners.”
For those interested, the couple said there is an option on edthediver.com to donate to waterway cleanups.
Bieber said donations have come from various locations where they have conducted cleanups
“We’ve also been hired by lake associations, so that helps with sponsorships,” he said. “Nicolet Law is our biggest sponsor right now – they love what we’re doing. Twigs Beverages [Sun Drop] in Shawano is also another big sponsor for us.”
Another person’s trash is another’s treasure
For them, Bieber and Barlament said cleaning waterways is about more than just removing litter and trash.
Even seemingly “innocent” items pulled from the water can reveal interesting stories once they’re cleaned up and researched.
“We found a bottle that originated in Rhode Island from 1845,” Bieber said. “It was a Perry Davis Vegetable Pain Killer bottle that we sold on the website for $45. We’ve got thousands of bottles already cleaned on shelves and probably have a thousand more in the basement needing a cleaning.”
Barlament said the fascinating thing about bottles is the history and story behind them.
“In Antigo, we found the smallest little miniature bottle from 1910,” she said. “It still had the cork, and the fluid in it ended up being cuticle remover. It’s incredible when we find those old bottles, especially when they have writing on them. We are amazed at how many we find that are fully intact.”
Bieber said he often imagines stepping back in time to picture how a bottle or artifact might have ended up at the bottom of a river.
“Maybe it was a logger from more than a hundred years ago who was done working for the day or was having lunch and just tossed it in the river after he was done,” he said.
Some discoveries, the couple said, stand out more than others – like the Lionel Richie head sculpture they pulled from the Wisconsin River.
“That thing is so heavy, it’s ridiculous,” Barlament laughed. “It was about 15 feet out into the river, so whoever threw it out there had to give it a good throw. When we posted that on social media, people kept saying, ‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for?’ [in tribute to a Lionel Richie song].”
Barlament said it’s “truly amazing” how items can look so different after a thorough cleaning.
“I recently found a Scooby Doo stuffed animal in the Wisconsin River,” she said. “After soaking it in the bathtub with laundry detergent, I literally stomped on that thing for an hour trying to get all the brown liquid out of it. After putting it in the washer and dryer, it almost looks brand new.”
The couple said their dives have revealed a range of items – some entertaining, others suspicious enough to warrant police notification.
“We’ve found cash drawers and guns,” Barlament said. “As a side note, whenever we find suspicious items, we always notify the local police department.”
On one occasion, Bieber said they came across a Model 94 Winchester 30-30 rifle, remarkably well-preserved underwater.
“The reason it was preserved so well was because it was wrapped in electrical tape and plastic,” he said. “After turning it into the sheriff’s department, they returned it to me three months later. They couldn’t find any crimes [connected] with it or the owner, so that’s now in my collection.”
With that particular rifle, Bieber said he thinks someone preserved it the best they could before dumping it for good reason.
“If it wasn’t used for a crime, I’m guessing the owner was planning on coming back at some point to retrieve it,” he said. “Maybe they forgot about it or forgot where they put it.”
Recovering lost property
Another big part of Bieber’s Underwater Recovery, Bieber said, is recovering lost property from people requesting his help.
He said he and Barlament have recovered phones, keys, watches, rings, trolling motors, computer hard drives, etc.
“We recently received a message from a guy in Milwaukee who dropped his phone in 17 feet of water,” he said. “We get calls/emails from all over the United States. Many times, we end up saying, ‘It’s best to Google scuba shops near you to save money and find a local diver.’ We have to charge for our driving and diving time [to make it worth it].”
Barlament said a find in the Peshtigo River almost had her in tears.
After posting a short video online showcasing the items they found that day – including two cellphones – Barlament said a woman reached out believing one of the phones might be hers.
“After drying it out and turning it on, it was confirmed to be hers,” she said.
Barlament said the woman had lost the phone two weeks earlier and hadn’t backed up any of her data.
“Unfortunately, her military brother had just died, so pictures and memories of him were on that phone,” she said. “We met with her in downtown Green Bay to return her phone. When we do stuff like that, it feels really amazing to give somebody’s property back to them when they think it was lost forever. We really pride ourselves on taking the time and effort.”
Another feel-good story, Barlament said, came from a recent cleanup in the Pine River, just south of Florence.
“One of the things we found that day was a bracelet,” she said.
Since it can be hard to tell if messages from people are genuine, Barlament said they always take extra steps to verify the claims.
“The lady said it was her son’s bracelet – he lost it on a recent tubing trip,” she said. “He was helping his nephew with a juice box, and it fell into the river.”
Barlament said the bracelet was special to the woman.
Barlament said the bracelet held deep meaning for the woman, who shared that she had received it in Fiji – more than over 7,000 miles away – while volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to build homes.
“She [had] brought back several bracelets for all the kids and grandkids,” she said.
Sure enough, Barlament said the bracelet was found right where they said they were tubing.
Neville Public Museum
Though the couple said they’ve sold some artifacts online, they are currently building inventory for an upcoming exhibit at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay.
The exhibit, “Keep our Waterways Clean With Ed the Diver and Christie B,” runs from Nov. 1 through Jan. 11, 2026.
“There will be a big variety there,” Bieber said. “The Lionel Richie piece will also be there. There are a lot of things people want to buy that can bring in a little bit of money, but for now, we’re concentrating on the Neville exhibit.”
Across their social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok – Bieber said they have about 350,000 followers combined.
“You can also visit my YouTube channel,” he said. “I have some longer-length videos on there.”
