The sunken and watery treasures around us: Today So Far

Jeff Hummel and Matt McCauley met in high school on Mercer Island back in the late 1970s. There was one thing that created a bond between them that has lasted decades — mystery.

Specifically, mysteries that lay beneath the surface of the waters we look at, swim in, and sail through every day. It started when Hummel's father told him tales of an airplane that crashed into Lake Washington years ago. His father saw it happen while working for Boeing in Renton. Since McCauley had scuba certification, they hatched a plan to search for that plane. They found it. That led to another plan, to raise and retrieve the plane. They collected old air hoses from gas stations, pumped air down into the plane, and floated it. Then, they borrowed a telephone pole truck to move it ... to McCauley's driveway. Their cunning plans were short on where to put this thing if they ever actually got it.