What is magnet fishing? Unexploded ordnances found in Charles River
NEEDHAM - For the second time in a week, a deteriorated military ordnance was pulled from the Charles River in Needham. The Massachusetts State Police bomb squad had to remove it and detonate it.
It happened as WBZ-TV was working on a story about the men who plucked it from the river. They are called magnet fishers.
They stand on the banks of the Charles River in Needham, not for bass or pickerel, but for nickel, iron or steel. Four guys, all with a mega sized magnet, on a mission to find metal, and a YouTube channel.
They admit there's not a ton of strategy. "I'm just chilling out," said Nate DeMontigny of Cape Cod Magnet Crew. "It's peaceful."
Throw it in, drag it along the bottom and pull up everything and anything. Like a motorcycle frame, a safe, knives, guns, a dagger.
"I love finding the pocketknives," said Josh Parker of 508 Magnets. "You know, what's the story behind them? why did somebody ditch them?"
As strange as it seems, it's growing in popularity. Magnet fishing really took off during the pandemic when people were looking for any reason to get outside. And now like an old piece of scrap metal, these guys are hooked.
There are all kinds of stuff hidden below. Some of it will be gathered up and sold for scrap, but most magnet fishers will tell you their main goal is to help clean up our rivers and lakes.
"If I can help clean it up a little that's what we're going to do," DeMontigny said.
"Even the trash we find is a treasure because we are getting harmful pollution out of the waterways," said Buddy Biggs, of Buddy Biggs Adventures.
Unexploded ordnances found in Charles River
But as we've learned over the last week, this can also be a dangerous hobby. Last Friday, Sean Martell (Brockton Magnet Fisher) plucked an old but live mortar out of the river. The bomb squad had to come in and detonate it.
And then on Wednesday, in almost the same exact spot, it happened again. Josh Parker pulled up a heavily deteriorated bazooka round.
"I'm speechless, I'm shaking, I'm nervous," said Parker. "When you're dealing with something that literally could explode, you want to be very, very careful."
Once again, the bomb squad had to detonate the device.
"There's a lot of weapons that maybe came home from World War II and you wonder did the person who owned these things pass away, and then the family didn't know what to do with them, so they chucked them in the water," Buddy Biggs said. "Was it used in a crime, who knows?"
And maybe a more important question, what else is down there?
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