MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Law enforcement in Florida has a new way to find the bodies of missing people in water. They're doing it with a trained otter. That's right. Cathy Carter from member station WUSF in Tampa met the animal that's helping Florida crack cold cases.
CATHY CARTER, BYLINE: In his backyard in Sarasota County, Florida, Mike Hadsell has filled several kiddie pools with water. In one of them floats Splash, a 2-year-old Asian small-clawed otter.
MIKE HADSELL: Splash, here we go.
(SOUNDBITE OF OTTER SQUEAKING)
HADSELL: Yeah, I hear you talking. Here. Oh, he wants more fish.
CARTER: As part of Splash's training, Hadsell tosses a canister with human remains into the pool.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SLOSHING)
HADSELL: Watch him hunt it. He will just absolutely have no problem finding it.
CARTER: He quickly picks up the smell. It's a handy skill for searching in low-visibility conditions.
HADSELL: Ninety percent of the water that I work in when I do forensic recovery is blackwater. I can't see my hand in front of my face half the time.
CARTER: Hadsell has been training rescue dogs for decades. He got the idea to train an otter while visiting Thailand. There he saw them being taught to herd fish into nets. Back in the States, a zoo agreed to give him an otter he could train to search for human remains. Recently, the sheriff in Polk County, Florida, requested Hadsell's help. In a Facebook video, Sheriff Grady Judd holds Splash and talks about the search.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GRADY JUDD: And this is the first time in 53 years of law enforcement we've ever used a cadaver otter. We've used cadaver dogs before. So we're pretty excited.
CARTER: In this search, Splash came up empty, but he has had nine successful missions out of 30 deployments. Turns out the Asian small-clawed otter is uniquely qualified for underwater recovery work. Their paws are similar to human hands, and they can stay underwater for up to eight minutes.
HADSELL: He leaves me. All I see is his butt going as he's heading out, and then he comes back and he grabs my mask to let me know that he's found something.
CARTER: If Splash detects an odor, he swims back to the spot. And when he's not in the water, the otter often cuddles with Hadsell's search dogs.
HADSELL: If I get my dive gear out, the dogs are always by the back door, ready to go. And he's just like them now. He's squeaking and squawking and throwing a fit. He's just part of the team now.
CARTER: A dedicated emergency worker, partial to being paid in raw salmon. For NPR News, I'm Cathy Carter, in Tampa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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