Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

COMMERCIAL
DIVING &
MARINE
SERVICES, INC.
Commercial Diving & Marine Services, Inc.
has provided quality diving services for over
forty years and its name and reputation are well
known throughout the inland diving industry.
Wayne Brusate explains he started diving
in 1971 as a sport diver. Occasionally, someone
would ask him to recover their wallet
or fishing gear in the St. Clair River. This
soon expanded into recovering larger things
like outboard motors and small boats and
then automobiles.
Around 1975, Wayne started working for
his uncle, Keith Malcolm, at Malcolm Marine
in St. Clair, Michigan, as a deckhand/diver.
The company did all sorts of marine work
from seawall construction, tug and barge work,
to Great Lakes salvage jobs. “I learned a lot
in those years,” Wayne says. “Salvage jobs
were tough and when working ‘no cure, no
pay’ it could cost you more to complete the
salvage than what you were going to be paid.”
By 1977, Wayne felt he was ready to go out
on his own and founded Commercial Diving
& Marine Services, Inc., based in Marysville,
Michigan. Wayne looked after the diving part
of the business while his wife, Donna, ran
a daycare, managed the bookkeeping and
answered the business phone at home.
Wayne recalls that it was difficult building
a client base, and to fill in the gaps, he often
worked for marine contractors doing pile
driving and underwater work as needed.
He credits Charlie Cosgro, a heavy gear diver,
with teaching him how to work safely in
tough, zero visibility conditions.
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