Life is full of surprises – but what happened to diver Ralf Schwarz is probably exceptional. His KNIPEX pliers, lost during a dive, found their way back to him...
Cloudy waters run deep
The Bay of Kiel may not be a diver's paradise with a colourful coral reef you can set as your next screensaver, but it still holds many secrets. The less glamorous secrets include a plethora of war munitions and weapons that were scuppered in the Baltic Sea after World War II. Although these pose no danger after so many decades, the water in front of the state capital of Schleswig-Holstein is constantly being tested for purity, not least because of the large Kiel harbour and the industry spread along the fjord.
Ralf Schwarz is the technical manager of the GEOMAR/Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel. He develops and designs scientific equipment for coastal, offshore and deep-sea applications. This includes not only incubation chamber systems for the laboratories on land but also devices for shallow and deep waters, which must be checked regularly.
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And who better to check this equipment than the person who built them? No problem for Schwarz, a good-humoured man who also dives in his spare time and does about 30 dives per year. These dives can vary: from depths of up to 40 metres and visibility of 30 metres with many colourful fish and exciting wrecks while on holiday to occupational dives in the cold, often murky Baltic Sea, where sometimes there is only half a metre of visibility.
Not quite lost forever
Somewhere between the warm and colourful and the cold and dull, his dive was at the eastern exit of the Kiel Fjord just above Laboe. The Baltic Sea here is about six metres deep, and Schwarz was installing mussel nets. Mussels filter water, and with their help and using many other factors such as current direction and strength, water pollution can be analysed.
His basic equipment also included his beloved and cherished Knipex diagonal cutter, which he attached to his dive suit with a rubber band. After the dive, he realised that his precious pliers were gone. He had not noticed that the rubber band had come loose and the pliers were now lying somewhere on the seafloor. Too bad – and basically hopeless.
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Ralf Schwarz's eyes widened as his colleague Mareike Kampmeier gave him exactly the same diagonal cutter, decorated with a golden ribbon, as a Christmas present almost two years after he had lost it on that fateful dive! She discovered the pliers with the bright red and blue handle at a depth of six metres during another dive in the silt near the mussel bed.
There were no mussels or barnacles on the pliers, which is unusual at this depth. Only the cutting edge was slightly damaged by corrosion at its thinnest point. Even the salty waters of the Baltic Sea did not affect the tool. With just a few drops of rust remover, the pliers were useable once again and are again ready for action.
Quality you can rely on
Ralf Schwarz is impressed by the lasting quality of the pliers and told us this amazing story of the recovery of his Knipex on site. Alongside other high-quality tools, his fantastic team of attentive colleagues also appreciate the longevity of the products. He has to rely on his tools under water. The equipment of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research is used in salt water up to 6,000 metres deep. It's no wonder then that Knipex can be found everywhere in the tool cart. There is virtually no chance that he'll lose another pair of pliers after this experience. And probably no colleague will happen to find a lost tool again at the bottom of Kiel Bay. This is why our product developers sent him a new tether with a safety eyelet and a new diagonal cutter as a thank you for this story. Here's to many more successful dives in the far north and around the world!
