In summer 1996, Lombardi literally thumbed through the phonebook and called numerous dive companies looking for summer employment to gain more experience. Coastal Diving Services, recently acquired by Lyle Smith, hired him to do a variety of light tasks such as hullcleanings and mooring work. Lombardi completed in excess of 100 dives that summer, mostly alone, and quickly learned about survival in the underwater environment. This was just the beginning of a long relationship with Coastal that intermittently ran through 2013 and scaled up to include dive contracting for heavy inshore construction and salvage for a number of clients.