A Georgia-based scuba diver and YouTuber recently solved a 20-year cold case using just his dive gear, sonar and underwater exploration equipment — and his passion for sleuthing.

Forty-two-year-old Jeremy Beau Sides, whose YouTube channel is called “Exploring with Nug,” found a vehicle with human remains that was a central piece of evidence in a Tennessee-based missing persons cold case.

Last month, after finding about the case online, Sides visited Sparta, Tennessee, to look for two teenagers who disappeared on April 3, 2000. Erin Foster, who was 18 at the time, and friend Jeremy Bechtel, 17, were last seen leaving Foster’s home in a 1988 Pontiac Grand Am.

Sides would have been about the same age as the teens around that time, which gave the task a little more of a personal feel.

“In high school, I lost two close friends in a car accident — and I remember that heartbreak,” Sides tells The Independent. “All this was running through my head as I was searching for them ... I couldn’t imagine their friends, 20 plus years [later], not having a clue where they’re at — still looking after 20 years.”

He found the Pontiac and missing teens while diving in Tennessee’s Calfkiller River, which Sides says he learned was an area Foster would have frequently driven past.

“It kind of seems like a dream, almost” Erin’s father, Cecil Foster, told Inside Edition after the discovery.

Since Sides’ video went viral, he’s been inundated with messages from other families seeking help to find missing loved ones.

“Ninety-five percent of them are just cases of missing people; there’s no cars involved, there’s suspected foul play,” Sides says. “I have to explain to them every time, ‘I would love to help you, but I have no experience tracing missing people.’”

He really has no formal PI training at all — he joined the Navy out of high school and went on work in the aviation and automotive industries. His hobbies of scuba diving and metal detecting are just something he does on the side.

“I always wanted a metal detector; it’s a cool adult hobby,” he says. “So I bought me a kit and just started playing with it — and I loved it. It just evolved into the water, maybe because of the heat — it’s hard to be out in the summertime heat in Georgia. Walking around in creeks, at least I was cooling off a little bit.”

Scuba diving was the next step, and soon he became part of a close-knit community of YouTubers who try to solve missing persons cases in the U.S.

“There’s about a handful of us around the country who are doing this,” he says. “We dedicate our time and energy into searching for missing persons cases and making videos documenting it.”

Before the outpouring of requests he’s received since the Tennessee case, Sides would find cases on his own — or get tips from others in his field. He says he would keep the fact that he was working on the case to himself, refraining from getting families involved.

“I don’t want to give them false hope that I’m going to bring them answers, and then I strike out,” he says. “I don’t want to talk to the family, put a camera in their face… If I don’t find anything, chances are I don’t do a video. I don’t tell anyone I was even in town. Then I’ll just keep doing research to see if I can find other places.”

The cases he usually takes on involve searching for items, and those that may be found in the water especially pique his interest, he says. There are tens of thousands of missing persons in the U.S., and many clues to be discovered.

“They’re everywhere,” he says. “It’s definitely more work to be done. I’m simply obsessed with all the stuff that I get to do, like scuba diving, playing with sonar, video editing. I love all that. It’s a huge passion of mine wrapped into one bigger goal.”