Love can appear in the most unlikely of places, but social media sensation Ed the Diver never expected that a waterlogged Barbie doll he pulled from the murky depths of the Shawano Dam would lead him to a real mermaid that captured his heart.
Ed Bieber, a former Marinette farmer and electrician now known as Ed the Diver on multiple social media platforms, finds thousands of fishing lures and golf balls a year scrounging on the bottom of area rivers, lakes and ponds. But the zebra mussel-encrusted Barbie he found last year in the Wolf River at Shawano Dam is certainly his best find ever, because it led him to his fiancée, Christie Barlament — the woman he calls “the mermaid of the Fox River.”
His followers number about 325,000 on YouTube, 70,000 on Facebook, 102,000 on Instagram and 140,000 on TikTok. His most famous video, when he found and collected 27 lure-laden boat anchors at a dam near Voyageur Park in De Pere, garnered 5.6 million TikTok views.
He has viewers from Africa and Australia to Germany and China. Thailand and Canada seem especially enamored by his videos. His average two-hour trips become 20-minute videos, shot only with a GoPro camera and an iPhone, then distilled down to about two-minute videos after editing. Short videos are key to attracting a wide audience, he’s found.
Bieber focuses on popular fishing and swimming spots for his cleanup efforts, which help anglers prevent snags and swimmers prevent getting impaled on hooks. Those hooks also are a threat to wildlife, including a gull he freed that was caught on a hook tied to a fishing line.
He’s come a long way from those early efforts in 2016 when he donned shorts and tennis shoes, making short snorkeling dives and putting his finds on a boogie board. Now he has multiple wetsuits in varying thicknesses (depending on water temperature) and typically uses a kayak as his treasure stash.
His cleanup efforts are as impressive as his lure recovery. He collected 13 bags of trash (including the shore) in one hour along the Fox River Trail in Green Bay. He recovered 180 pounds of lead sinkers in 20 minutes from the Menominee River dam. He’s found many drug needles and other paraphernalia, as well as vapes. He encourages others to join him in his cleanup efforts, advertising in advance where he will be. He’s organized large cleanups from Minneapolis to northern Illinois.
“It inspires other people to do it, too,” he said.
He also collects new and used fishing rods that he hands out to kids who gather around his searches.
One of his most exciting finds was a classic Winchester Model 94 lever-action rifle, wrapped in plastic and taped shut, in the Menominee River near the Michigan border. He always contacts law enforcement when he finds potentially stolen items, but authorities had no reports of a stolen rifle so he was able to keep it.
He found a pillowcase with stolen jewelry stashed inside two metal and wooden containers.
Inside one of the containers were the obituaries of a mother and grandmother. He was able to contact the family, who wanted the obituaries more than the jewelry but eventually took it back.
The Lena native who grew up in Marinette and still has his diving office in Marinette now lives at CityDeck Landing in Green Bay, the apartment complex his fiancée manages.
Back in March 2024, while diving by the Shawano Dam, he found a dirty Barbie doll encrusted with zebra mussels. Once he posted the doll on his YouTube and other sites, fan interest exploded.
One fan suggested he put it for sale on eBay to raise money for his cleanups. The bidding started at 99 cents and quickly soared.
Barlament knew it was for a good cause, so she entered the winning bid of $1,225.
Bieber put the Barbie doll (dubbed “the Crandon Barbie” by social media comic Ryan Ruebl “because it smells like beer, diesel fuel and freedom”) in a tackle box with a bow and gave it to her with a card on March 28, her 40th birthday.
“It was just so sweet,” she said.
He asked her out, and they have been together ever since. She is working on her diving certification so she can join him on his underwater adventures.
He proposed in August during a trip to Alaska, although they haven’t set a wedding date
Bieber recently won a Celebrity Impact award from Do Good Wisconsin for his cleanup efforts during the Gala for Good Ice Ball and has a display of his finds planned for the Neville Museum in Green Bay this November.
Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.
Love in low places
