Scuba divers David Bryant, 29, and Christopher Cook, 21, have one of the most unusual jobs certified divers can occupy: They travel around the country diving for golf balls at golf courses.

When they disappear beneath the surface of a golf course lake, they are gathering golf balls for a company called Springer Golf Balls, based in Santa Rosa, Calif. The balls end up being sold on the Internet after an intensive examination and reconditioning process.

Bryant and Cook said each lake or pond on a golf course in the Northern Nevada area nets some 2,000 to 3,000

golf balls.  “We anticipate going to the East Coast after this dive as we have a number of golf courses there,” Bryant said.

Normally, scuba divers carry compressed air tanks on their backs, but when these divers go beneath the surface, they are attached by a 25-foot air hose hooked up to a floating rubber tube.

Air bubbles follow the path of the divers, and they may not surface for some 20 to 30 minutes.

When they surface they usually have gathered about 200 to 300 golf balls.

“You would not believe what we find in many of the lakes and ponds we dive in,” Bryant said. “I’ve found about 150 golf clubs. All are nearly perfect — I assume that some disappointed golfer tossed the club in the water over a frustrating game. Once I found a complete deck umbrella.”

Cook said he’s surprised by the wildlife that lives in these bodies of water.

“You have to worry about some of the fish in those lakes, as they love to bite you,” Cook said. “I have seen some crawdads almost 6 to 8 inches in length and they really get disturbed when we dive around where they are located. When they grab you, it wakes you up.”

“We even have found clams,” Bryant said, as he opened his hand to display one.

Golfers may think they could jump in to retrieve a lost ball, but Cook and Bryant warned that the water is usually deeper than it looks. The divers said many of the lakes around Red Hawk are about 15 to 25 feet deep.

When the winter season moves into Northern Nevada, the divers will move to warmer parts of the country.

“We’ve been to some of the most exclusive courses in the country,” Cook said, and “we’ve been lucky so far as we have never been hit by a golf ball.”

Cook and Bryant said they try always to extend every courtesy to the golfers during their dives.

They also said their favorite course is Red Hawk — as they find a lot of golf balls there.

“Guess more golfers hook and slice at Red Hawk than other courses,” Bryant joked.