HOMOSASSA, Fla. – Coast Guard Station Yankeetown, along with state and local agencies, has been searching for a missing diver in the vicinity of the Homosassa River near Yankeetown, Fla., since about 4 p.m. today.
The Coast Guard received a call at 2:24 p.m. today from two men reporting that their dive instructor, James Cummins, 40, of Inverness, Fla., had not resurfaced from a dive.
The three men had been cave diving from a 29-foot vessel in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore of Homosassa. The two students resurfaced after a dive and waited for Cummins to resurface. The men waited 15 minutes and called the Coast Guard.
Surface assets from Coast Guard Station Yankeetown, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team, along with a helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, in Clearwater, Fla., have been searching the area since about 4 p.m. today with no sign of Cummins.
Cummins is reported to have been wearing a black wetsuit with a silver tank.
Weather conditions in the search are are one- to two-foot seas, 20-knot winds and the water temperature is 84 degrees.
