TRAVERSE CITY -- Authorities believe it's unlikely someone drowned in West Grand Traverse Bay after dive teams spent several hours probing the water.
Dive crews spent nearly three hours Tuesday evening and more than four hours Wednesday searching the bay after a report of a possible drowning near Bryant Park Tuesday. Divers didn't recover a body and called off the search at about 1 p.m. Wednesday.
"They have checked it very thoroughly, and they're just not turning up anything," Traverse City Police Capt. Steve Morgan said.
Three residents on Peninsula Drive told police they were sitting on their back deck at about 8:15 p.m. Tuesday as they watched a swimmer north of the park. They saw the person go under and not resurface, so they called 911.
Weather and water conditions were ideal during both days of the search, Morgan said. Dive crews quit at about 11 p.m. Tuesday because of darkness, but resumed at about 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Crews from Antrim and Grand Traverse counties and the United States Coast Guard covered up to three linear miles of water during the search, Grand Traverse Undersheriff Nate Alger said. Sonar was used, along with boats that dragged divers on a tow bar across the bottom.
The Coast Guard also checked the shallows and shoreline on both days. It's about 15 feet deep where the witnesses believe the swimmer went under, Alger said.
No one on the Bryant Park beach at the time reported anyone missing, Morgan said. Police didn't receive any other missing persons reports, and no abandoned vehicles were discovered.
"There's nothing that would indicate we've got somebody missing out there," Morgan said.
The witnesses who reported the missing swimmer were "credible," Morgan said. It's possible they saw an experienced swimmer spend a lengthy time underwater and surface elsewhere, he said.
Police and emergency crews must take every report of struggling swimmers very seriously, Morgan said.
"We certainly wouldn't want to disregard someone stating that they saw someone in trouble in the water," he said.
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