Kathy Carter

In Sarasota County, Florida, Mike Hansel runs through training exercises with Splash, an Asian small-clawed otter.

Turns out otters are exceptionally suited for underwater recovery work.

They can stay submerged for up to eight minutes.

Hatzell has been training rescued dogs for decades.

He got the idea to train an otter in Timeland, where fishermen use them to herd fish into nets.

Splash is trained to detect the odor of human remains.

So far, he's been on 30 missions with nine successful finds.

For NPR News, I'm Kathy Carter in Tampa.

In Sarasota County, Florida, Mike Hansel runs through training exercises with Splash, an Asian small-clawed otter.

Turns out otters are exceptionally suited for underwater recovery work.

They can stay submerged for up to eight minutes.

Hatzell has been training rescued dogs for decades.

He got the idea to train an otter in Thailand, where fishermen use them to herd fish into nets.

Splash is trained to detect the odor of human remains.

So far, he's been on 30 missions with nine successful finds.

For NPR News, I'm Kathy Carter in Tampa.

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In Sarasota County, Florida, Mike Hansel runs through training exercises with Splash, an Asian small-clawed otter.

Turns out otters are exceptionally suited for underwater recovery work.