Key Largo diver missing; boat found sinking offshore

[Bobcat]

Noah Cullen, 24, went diving near Molasses Reef Monday morning. His sinking boat was spotted near Dixie Shoals in the afternoon.
BY DAVID GOODHUE
dgoodhue@keysreporter.comAugust 5, 2014 Updated 7 hours ago
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Noah Cullen's sailboat, the Jubilee, is shown here sinking near Dixie Shoals, about seven miles off Key Largo, Monday afternoon. COURTESY OF ANNIE CULLEN



A 24-year-old Key Largo man went missing Monday while freediving off the Upper Keys.

Noah Cullen, a 2008 Coral Shores High School graduate, left the Dream Bay Resort Marina at around 9 a.m. Monday morning, his sister Annie Cullen said. The Cullen family owns the mile marker 99 resort.

Noah went diving by himself on his 25-foot sailboat, the Jubilee, which was spotted around 2:30 p.m. sinking with no one on board near Dixie Shoals -- about 7 miles offshore of Key Largo.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios, a District 7 spokesman, said the Coast Guard Cutter Sawfish, from Miami, and small boat crews from Station Islamorada, will continue searching for Cullen throughout the night.

Crews from two Coast Guard helicopters searched for Cullen during the day, but did not find him, Rios said. An air search is expected to resume at daylight, Rios said.

A "Good Samaritan" boat crew sailing inbound to Key Largo spotted the Jubilee late in the afternoon, Rios said.

Rios said the Coast Guard received reports that Noah Cullen planned to dive near Molasses Reef.

Annie describes Noah as an avid diver who would often take solo freediving trips to snap underwater photos, so going out alone is not unusual.

"He is a very adventurous, very independent person," Annie, 20, said. "He is also very intelligent, so we didn't worry" [about him going on the dive trip].

[Serious News]

BY CAMMY CLARK
CCLARK@MIAMIHERALD.COM
KEY LARGO -- Boat captain Noah Cullen set sail by himself Monday morning from his mother’s house in Key Largo, but something went terribly wrong during his return to shore.

His 28-foot sailboat, Jubilee, was spotted drifting near Dixie Shoal, in water about 300 feet deep and about seven nautical miles northeast of Molasses Reef, at 2:30 p.m. Nobody was aboard, and a lightning storm had just passed through the area.

The boater took a picture of the vessel, which clearly was taking on water and looked like it was about to sink, and alerted authorities.

Since then, the Coast Guard has conducted at least nine searches by air and sea, covering 1,100 nautical square miles, said Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios of Coast Guard District 7. The Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department’s Emergency Water Team, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and individuals with boats and aircraft also searched. As of Tuesday evening, there was no sighting of Cullen, 24, or his boat.

“I’m hoping that he just swam and swam through the night,” his mother, Tanya Cleary, said Tuesday afternoon. “He might just be so exhausted that he is sleeping somewhere in the mangroves. That’s the best-case scenario I’m thinking about right now.”

Rob Bleser, captain of the Emergency Water Team, said his team searched all day, from Port Largo to Ocean Reef in North Key Largo. “All we can do now is cross our fingers at this point and hope he is on dry land, making his way back,” Bleser said.

After Cullen started his trip at his mother’s house off mile marker 100, he and his boat with a Bahamian flag were spotted at noon Monday at French Reef by a boat captain with Quiessence Dive Center.

“He had just gotten out of the water after free diving and was witnessed setting sail toward shore,” Bleser said. “The captain watching him was impressed with his abilities.”

At that point Cullen was under full sail, and Bleser said his boat captain watched him go as far as White Bank Dry Docks, which is about 3 miles from shore. About an hour after Cullen left French Reef, the storm rolled in.

“There was lots of lightning, heavy rain and winds up to 25 knots,” said Stephen Chesser, a meteorologist at the National Weather Station in Key West.

At first, when Cleary heard her son was free diving by himself, she feared he might have suffered a shallow water blackout, when a free diver loses consciousness close to the surface.

“But when I saw the report that he got back on the boat and headed toward Dry Rocks, we think he was done free diving for the day and was headed in,” Cleary said.

When the sailboat was seen drifting, its anchor was up, another sign that it was a boating accident and not a free-diving mishap.

The sailboat’s front mast was reefed, indicating that Cullen ran into heavy winds.

The sailboat was seen drifting several miles northeast from the Dry Rocks, which likely means it was going in that direction due to the currents or storm winds.

Cullen recently had painted the boat’s hull and had taken it for a sail with no problems on Saturday. “I don’t think the boat was defective in any way,” Cleary said.

Cullen, a 2008 graduate of Coral Shores High School in the Upper Keys, is an experienced sailor. His mother said he began taking lessons at just 5 years old, and was a natural.

“He is a water boy,” she said.

Cullen also is a dive master and had acquired his 50-ton captain’s license.

He has sailed solo to the Bahamas.

“I worried much more about him doing that than this,” Cleary said. “He assured me when he went to the Bahamas he was tethered to his boat and had a spot locator. I think this time he was so close to home he was comfortable in his environment and was not tethered. I don’t think he had his spot locator on.”

If Cullen was knocked off his boat in the storm, Cleary takes some comfort knowing that her son is an adventurer. “My friend always said if we were on Survivor or some other disaster show, they’d want Noah with us.”

Cullen has read survival books, knew the waters off Key Largo “like the back of his hand,” can navigate by the stars, is a strong swimmer and has camped out in the Everglades, his mother said.

His adventuresome spirit also led to him getting a pilot’s license at just 17.

“I think he soloed after only nine hours in the air,” Cleary said. “He taught himself mostly on a simulator.”

Two years ago, Cullen’s father died unexpectedly. So he started helping out his mother at the family business, Dream Bay Resorts in Key Largo.

“He recently was going to go back to college,” she said. “He had enrolled at FKCC [Florida Keys Community College] for marine biology.”

Cleary is holding out hope that her son will be found soon.

“It really was agony to go through last night, thinking of him floating in the water in the dark,” she said. “But I know if anybody can survive this, Noah can.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/0...#storylink=cpy

[Serious News]

Search continues for free diver
CITIZEN STAFF
The search for a missing free diver whose boat was found adrift Monday continued Wednesday as Miami Coast Guardsmen took over the case.

Noah Cullen, 24, of Islamorada, reportedly left at 8 a.m. Monday to free dive near Molasses Reef when his 25-foot sailboat, Jubilee, was found adrift and partially submerged near Dixie Shoal off Key Largo at 3:30 p.m. Monday, according to the Coast Guard.

The search for Cullen, a 2008 graduate of Coral Shores High School, was passed to Coast Guard Sector Miami on Wednesday given that ocean currents would have likely pushed him toward their area of operations, said Sector Key West spokesman Lt. Peter Bermont.

The Coast Guard search continued to include the 87-foot Cutter Sawfish out of Key West, Station Islamorada response boats and aircraft from Miami and Clearwater, Bermont said.

http://keysnews.com/node/57203

[Serious News]

Mother urges boaters to look in mangroves and near shore for missing son

Although the U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for a missing Key Largo diver after five days, the young man’s family is urging area boaters to be on the lookout in case he is still alive.

Boaters should pay particular attention near shore and in the mangroves in case he swam to shore, his mother Tanya Cleary said.

Noah Cullen, 24, disappeared while on a freediving trip off Key Largo Monday afternoon. He was last seen boarding his 28-foot sailboat, Jubilee, at French Reef by a dive boat captain in another vessel around noon.

His boat was last spotted sinking at Dixie Shoals (GPS coordinates 2503.81208015.054w) at around 2:30 p.m. Monday. The vessel is also missing.

"That's pretty deep water, but maybe, with good visibility, divers might get lucky and spot it," Cleary said. "Also, some people have even said they have sonar equipment that could be used."

A photo of the sinking Jubilee taken by a passing boater appears to show it battened down from the outside.

But Cleary said since a thunderstorm passed over the area when Cullen was on the water, he may have gone inside the boat for shelter.

“Finding the vessel could help give us much needed closure, so we appreciate any effort by the public to locate it,” Cleary said Friday afternoon.

She also asks that boaters look closely in mangrove areas. Cullen is a strong swimmer and avid outdoorsman. Cleary says there is a chance he abandoned his boat when it was sinking and swam to shore.

“If Noah swam to shore, he might be injured or too weak to call out,” Cleary said. “He knows the mangroves well, and has camped in the Everglades many times, so he could, theoretically, be in there alive.”

http://www.keysnet.com/2014/08/08/49.../99/100/&ihp=1

[Bobcat]

Noah Cullen's sunken boat found
Small, remote-control sub able to film vessel
BY DAVID GOODHUE
dgoodhue@keysreporter.comAugust 28, 2014 Updated 11 hours ago
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A remote control submarine captures an image of Noah Cullen's sunken sailboat sitting at the bottom of the ocean in about 300 feet of water.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROB BLESER


Volunteers this week found the sunken sailboat that belongs to a young Key Largo man who went missing in early August while on a solo freediving excursion off the Upper Keys.

Noah Cullen, 24, was last seen boarding his 28-foot boat, the Jubilee, at French Reef by a dive boat captain helming a passing vessel at around noon Aug. 4. About two hours later, the Jubilee was seen sinking at Dixie Shoal by another boat crew.

A frantic search by the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies covering more than 5,000 square nautical miles went on for 90 days before being called off. But volunteers made up largely of the Upper Keys dive community, which Cullen is part of, never gave up.

And on Wednesday, a piece of the puzzle as to what happened to him and his vessel that stormy afternoon was found.

“It’s been a challenge, but I’m still kind of amazed we pulled it off,” Rob Bleser said Thursday. “I just couldn’t leave it alone.”

Bleser is the head of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department’s water emergency team and owner of Quiescence Dive Center. He located the 28-foot vessel using a small remote-controlled submarine on loan from Lad Akins of Reef Environmental Education Foundation. Akins is also a member of the fire department’s dive team.

“We try to take care of our own here,” Bleser said.

Using the sub, Bleser and his stepson spotted the Jubilee sitting on the ocean floor in about 300 feet of water almost one nautical mile northeast of where the boat was seen sinking.

Bleser and other volunteers began searching the area on Aug. 17.

Earlier this week, Cullen’s stepfather Jeff Cleary, Bleser and other volunteers, including Carlos Ruiz of West Marine, pinged the Jubilee using donated sonar equipment.

“We got a decent hit,” Bleser said.

The sub, called an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, has two cameras on it. Bleser and the volunteers placed a depth gauge on one camera and a compass on the other and were able to find Cullen’s boat close to the area where they pinged earlier in the week.

“We got some pretty good shots of it,” said Bleser.

Video from the ROV is being enhanced by technicians with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

Cullen remains missing, but finding his boat provided a small piece of closure his family has been seeking since he disappeared.

“It’s been an amazing search, and we really feel loved by the community,” Cullen’s mom, Tanya Cleary said.

[Ratickle]

SO now they need to find out if he's in it?

[Bobcat]

That's what I was thinking.

[Bobcat]

Tech divers needed in boat recovery
Diving community wants to bring closure for family
BY ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff
alinhardt@keysnews.com
The Upper Keys diving community is taking steps to begin technical deep-water dives on the sailboat believed to belong to missing 24-year-old free diver Noah Cullen.

Cullen went missing on Aug. 4 near Dixie Shoal, about seven miles southeast of Key Largo, while bad weather pounded his 25-foot sailboat, the Jubilee, which sank.

The Coast Guard searched for Cullen for days before calling off the search. Cullen was believed to be alone when he took his sailboat out to go free diving along Molasses Reef, search officials said.

Meanwhile, members of the local dive community continued the search, which included Rob Bleser, owner of Quiescence Dive Center and supervisor of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department's water emergency team.

Using a remote controlled submarine from Reef Environmental Education Foundation, Bleser and other volunteers located about a week ago what they believe is Cullen's sailboat about a mile from where the boat was last seen.

Searchers had previously used sonar equipment to get a "hit" in the area before they launched the remote sub, Bleser said.

The Jubilee is in 305 feet of water and in strong current about a mile from where it was last seen by passing boaters before Cullen went missing, Bleser said.

"We're waiting to hear from the medical examiner and the FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) to see if they have any forensic divers. If not, we'll put divers down," Bleser said. "It takes very special equipment and tech divers to go that deep. We have very few guys who can make that dive, and it will be done strictly on a volunteer basis."

In other words, such a deep dive and in such strong current is dangerous. Bleser said the dive community has come together and is committed to providing Cullen's family with closure.

What happened to Cullen remains speculative, but Bleser said one theory being discussed by volunteers is a lightning strike, which could have killed Cullen instantly and damaged his sailboat, causing it to sink with Cullen's remains still on board.

Bleser noted that all the hatches on Cullen's boat appear to be closed, which may mean that Cullen was preparing for the squall that stormed through the area at the time. That may mean that Cullen was inside the boat in an effort to avoid lightning. Bleser said no one will know for sure until divers inspect the boat closer.

Volunteers are less speculative about whether or not the vessel found is Cullen's boat. The markings seen by images taken by the remote submarine appear definitive, Bleser said.

"All the rigging, the main sail, the outboard motor lifted up and the solar panels -- all those things were identified as his boat," Bleser said. "It was very clear."

alinhardt@keysnews.com

[Bobcat]

Human remains found in sunken vessel believed to belong to Noah Cullen, the missing Key Largo diver
BY CAMMY CLARK
cclark@miamiherald.comSeptember 23, 2014 Updated 21 hours ago
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A diver looks over a sunken sailboat belonging to missing diver Noah Cullen. Human remains, believed to be Cullen’s, were found on the vessel.
(PHOTO BY JOE CITELLI)


Several miles off the coast of Key Largo, in dark and cold water more than 300 feet below the surface, two volunteer technical divers made the dangerous descent to a sunken sailboat in search of its missing captain, 24-year-old Noah Cullen.

The divers, Joe Citelli and Steve Muslin, found what is believed to be human remains inside the cabin and retrieved a small sample to be analyzed. While positive identification through DNA could take months, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office investigator Vince Weiner said, “There is no indication it is anybody but him.”

Cullen’s mother, Tanya Cleary, said Monday she believes it is the remains of her son. He has been missing since Aug. 4, when a boater spotted his 28-foot sailboat sinking after a storm, and Cleary said she is beginning the grieving process.

“We wanted closure, but this is also extremely painful,” Cleary said. “We’ve had such a strange seven weeks going through this. We even had a person come to us saying Noah was in the witness protection program, which is crazy.”

The last tweet posted on Cullen’s Twitter account @bathyphile came on the morning of his disappearance. It said: “Noah Cullen is dropping out for a bit #sailing #bathyphile #offshore.”

There also were tips that Cullen, a 2008 graduate of Coral Shores High School, may be in the Bahamas.

“We had a lot of reasons to hope, only to be let down,” Cleary said. “So it’s bittersweet to find his body in the boat, although we probably always have known he was in there.”

The tragedy began on a nice Monday morning, when Cullen decided to take his sailboat to the reef to go free diving. He had tried to get friends to go with him but ended up going by himself.

He set sail from his mother’s house, near mile marker 100 of the Overseas Highway, and a few hours later was spotted at noon at French Reef by a boat captain with Quiesence Dive Center.

Cullen had just finished free diving and began sailing toward shore. “The captain watching him was impressed with his [sailing] abilities,” Rob Bleser, captain of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department’s Water Emergency Team, said at the time.

That would be the last time Cullen was seen alive. About an hour after he was seen leaving French Reef, a storm rolled in with lightning, heavy rains and winds of up to 25 knots.

After the storm passed, at about 2:30 p.m., the boater spotted the sinking sailboat near Dixie Shoal, about seven nautical miles northwest of Molasses Reef. No signs of life on board were evident. The boater took a photograph, alerted authorities and left the area.

A massive air and sea search was launched. The U.S. Coast Guard and local and state agencies, as well as a small army of volunteers, covered about 5,000 nautical square miles over several days. While the official search was called off, the Upper Keys dive community did not give up.

“Noah was a member of the dive community, his stepfather co-owns one of the local dive shops and we take care of our own,” Bleser said.

The first step was finding the sailboat. A sonar scan conducted near the last known sighting of Cullen’s boat showed what appeared to be a boat just 80 yards away, but this proved not to be the case.

Bleser thought that the boat likely sank before the Coast Guard began its aerial search. Starting with the last known point, he calculated a model based on the direction, flow and speed of the current.

“I figured the maximum distance it could have traveled was 9,500 feet,” he said.

On the third attempt using this model, sonar from a private boat detected what appeared to be a sailboat about 5,800 feet from the last sighting of the sailboat, Bleser said.

Next came positively identifying the boat as the Jubilee. For this mission, a remotely operated underwater vehicle was borrowed from Lad Akins, head of the Key Largo-based Reef Environmental Education Foundation.

At the end of August, Bleser and his stepson sent the ROV down to the wreck and made the confirmation.

The final step was getting tech divers who were willing to make the risky dive. That led to Citelli and Muslin, who have about 50 years of combined experience.

Said Citelli: “When I heard the kid’s age, I said to myself, ‘This could be my son or my grandson. I know how I would feel in the position of those parents.’ Steve and I thought it was important to get it done.”

Citelli, whose impressive diving résumé includes a 430-foot dive 140 miles offshore to identify the shipwreck Joseph M. Cudahy, said he also didn’t want to have less-experienced tech divers push their limits and have it turn into a “double disaster.”

Citelli and Muslin both used rebreathers, a closed circuit system in which exhaled gases are scrubbed of carbon dioxide and replenished with fresh oxygen so the mixture can be breathed again. Mixed gases are used because air becomes toxic below 218 feet, Citelli said.

Each diver also had two “bailout bottles” with different mixes for different depths. “The cardinal rule is always to have an alternate source,” Cittelli said. “The deeper you go, the greater the risk. Once you get to the 300-foot range, there is very little margin for error.”

There were safety divers on the boat, as well as a hyperbaric physician.

The two men made the descent and spent 18 minutes on the bottom. They were expecting water temperatures in the 80s, but they encountered 64 degrees.

They surveyed the boat, taking video and collecting the tissue sample before making the ascent, which included about an hour of decompression stops along the way for total dive times of just over 80 minutes.

"It was a very dangerous operation for them and we're just extremely grateful," Cleary said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will use the video to help in its investigation of the boat fatality, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office will use it for its missing persons case.

The tissue sample was brought to the medical examiner’s office in Monroe County to ensure it was human remains before it will be transported to another agency for DNA testing. But the medical examiner will not be able to determine cause of death.

“And I doubt we’ll ever know the true reason why the boat sank,” said Bobby Dube, spokesman for FWC. “It probably was from the storm. There are many theories. Some think it was probably struck by lightning.”

That theory could also mean that Cullen was either killed instantly or rendered unconscious and not able to escape from the boat before it sank.

Due to the dangerous depth, there are no plans to return to the boat. His family is at peace knowing Cullen’s final resting spot is in a place he loved.

“I’d just like Noah to be remembered as someone who loved the water and was a passionate defender of the unique environment of the Keys,” Cleary said.

[Ratickle]

I'm a bit surprised they just leave him there.

[Scarab KV]

I'm a bit surprised they just leave him there.

I've done a lot of reading on deep dives. Bottom time is very limited and a lot could go horribly wrong trying to bring a body out of a confined space as a cabin entrance.
These divers also have to deal with possible entanglement in any kind of rigging or mooring lines that are free floating.
Extra exertion also eats extra oxygen.
Decomposition of the remains may have made it impossible also.
Was there a reason why the boat that spotted it sinking couldn't have gotten along side to look for anyone aboard?