BALTIMORE — When Evan Woodard goes fishing in Baltimore's harbor, he's not looking for sea life. In fact, he's not looking for anything in particular. And he never knows, what he'll find.
Like this Vespa, Woodard pulled up on one of the "magnet fishing expeditions" he hosts.
Or one of the 189 scooters he's dredged up from the bottom of the water since January. A lot of what he's found was likely dumped in the harbor, but recently, he helped someone who lost his bike in the water accidentally.
"It was a Baltimore City teacher. He was riding through the harbor, unfortunately someone walked in front of him and him and his bike went into the water. He messaged me and asked if I'd be able to come out and help him, and I happened to be in the area that day. I saw the message and said, 'Hey I'll be right there.' And I pulled it right out after about five minutes," Woodard said.
Not only is Woodard fishing out some really cool items, he's also doing his part to keep the water in the harbor clean.
"A lot of them are Lime scooters, which haven't been in the city since, I think, before the pandemic. So these have been down there for a long time. And as we keep doing this, we're noticing the number go down and down. Before we were finding like 10 a night. Now, we're lucky if we find one during a fishing trip," Woodard said.
And not everything he finds is even from this century. Check out this Victorian-era bench, that Woodard restored to its former glory.
His historical restoration efforts aren't limited to what he finds in the water. He actually started on land, with a pandemic hobby called "privy digging."
"People think of archaeology as going to like ancient Egypt or South America. But in reality, it's literally in your backyard," Woodard explained.
Woodard goes digging at the sites of old outhouses - that's where people threw out their trash in the 18th and 19th centuries.
He's found everything from a pocket watch, to a horse's jaw.
"You just don't know what people threw away back then. Think about what you throw away today, what can someone find 200 years from now and say, oh this is kind of cool," Woodard added.
He doesn't intend to waste all this stuff just sitting around his house. Some of the broken pieces, he turns into jewelry to sell.
He also plans to open a museum in the next couple of years to showcase the stories behind his finds.
