Facing severe staffing shortages and equipment issues, the National Park Service has quietly dismantled its underwater recovery team at America’s highest-fatality recreation area.
(Photo: Marcus Jones/Getty Images)
Published June 24, 2026 03:11PM
Paired with an abundance of visitors and boating opportunities, Lake Mead in Nevada is one of America’s deadliest national park sites. Now, as the peak summer season kicks into high gear, the National Park Service (NPS) has suspended its recovery dive team responsible for recovering the bodies of drowning victims.
On May 14, NPS Park Dive Officer Sergeant Ryan McCrea announced in an email that Lake Mead dive operations would be put on hiatus, effective immediately, due to staffing shortages and the need for more equipment and training.
“The park temporarily stood down its dive team to ensure safe operations while personnel complete required training and certifications,” an NPS spokesperson told Outside. “The decision was based on operational safety requirements and the availability of certified dive team personnel to perform this specialized function.”
Lake Mead is one of the deadliest NPS sites in the country, accounting for roughly seven percent of all national park deaths over the last decade. It’s also one of the most popular sites; in 2025, more than six million people visited Lake Mead. That same year, the recreation area recorded 18 deaths—more than any NPS site. High fatalities at the desert lake are driven by a mix of busy boating, sudden weather shifts, open-water swimming, and extreme heat. One of the park’s dive team’s key responsibilities is recovering the bodies of drowning victims.
“Current team membership is not sufficient to safely or reliably support dive operations in accordance with NPS standards, operational readiness expectations, and risk-management requirements,” wrote McCrea in an email obtained by local media outlet, The Nevada Independent. During the suspension period, McCrea wrote that the program will undergo a staffing assessment to determine adequate personnel availability and a comprehensive program audit to evaluate safety, training, equipment, and operational posture.
“While operations are suspended, all dive-related requests should be routed to partner organizations or agencies based on jurisdiction and operational need,” he added.
The dive team is not a standalone unit of dedicated employees, but one made up of existing NPS employees who take on paid diver roles in addition to their regular positions, according to the spokesperson. The team’s suspension follows sweeping changes across the NPS primarily due to federal budget cuts that have led to severe staffing shortages. In 2025, Lake Mead lost more than a dozen staffers, including an aquatic ecologist responsible for testing water safety.
However, NPS told Outside that the dive team’s staffing reductions were not a result of funding shortfalls.
“The current reduction in certified dive team personnel is the result of normal attrition, including promotions and medical-related limitations that affected team membership over time,” the NPS spokesperson said.
Lake Mead National Recreation Area is massive, encompassing roughly 1.5 million acres of terrain along the Nevada-Arizona border. The park’s main attraction is the 247-square-mile Lake Mead reservoir, and it also includes nearby Lake Mohave, as well as vast stretches of the surrounding Mojave Desert. But the lake is also drying up. It currently sits more than 180 feet below full pool, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, the monitoring agency. These shrinking waters are revealing long-hidden dead bodies, but also bringing swimmers in closer contact with sunken boats and other debris along the lakebed.
Beyond emergency response and forensic recovery, Lake Mead’s divers are also responsible for salvaging sunken watercraft, protecting the park’s fragile underwater archaeological sites, and monitoring endangered native fish populations like the razorback sucker and bonytail chub.
NPS hopes to have the dive team back online within six months, the spokesperson told Outside. In the meantime, partner agencies will handle diving-related requests. Operational responsibilities will be routed to local resources and police departments.
