DUCK KEY, Florida — Florida marine officers pulled three missing divers and their gear aboard a patrol boat after a Navy helicopter found the men floating nearly two nautical miles from where they began their dive in the Middle Florida Keys.
Watch the Florida Keys rescue
The publisher-hosted video below contains body-camera footage released by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. It shows officers locating the men in rough water and helping them aboard.
Video source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission body-camera footage published by WPEC/CBS12. ThinBlueNews is embedding the publisher-hosted file, not re-uploading it. If the player does not load, watch the footage with the CBS Miami report or open FWC's source post.
Divers separated from their boat in rough conditions
CBS Miami reported July 31, citing FWC, that officers were notified at about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 29, that three adult men were missing in Monroe County. The men had been diving a reef off Duck Key when rough conditions separated them from their boat.
FWC joined U.S. Coast Guard Station Marathon and U.S. Navy Search and Rescue Key West in the search. A Navy search-and-rescue helicopter located the divers at about 12:12 p.m., roughly 1.74 nautical miles from where their dive began, according to the agency information published by CBS Miami.
Marine officers bring all three men to safety
FWC marine officers immediately moved to the helicopter's location. The released footage shows three divers in the water as officers bring the men and their equipment aboard the patrol vessel.
Officials determined that the divers were not injured. The men were then reunited with their dive boat, CBS Miami and WPEC/CBS12 reported.
“Every minute matters during a search on the water,” FWC Capt. Adam Garrison, the agency's Monroe County area supervisor, said in the statement quoted by both outlets. Garrison credited coordination among FWC, the Coast Guard and Navy Search and Rescue, along with the agencies' marine and aviation resources, for the quick and safe outcome.
The operation shows the value of a coordinated marine search: the alert reached officers before noon, an aviation crew found the separated divers within about half an hour, and a patrol boat completed the recovery without reported injuries.
Readers can find more verified lifesaving work in ThinBlueNews' police rescue news, body-camera rescue videos, first responder heroes and latest news.
Sources, video and image attribution
- CBS Miami — “Video shows rescue of missing divers in Florida Keys after getting separated from boat,” published July 31, 2026. The report attributes the incident details, still image and footage to FWC.
- WPEC/CBS12 — “Three missing divers rescued from the Florida Keys,” published July 30 and updated July 31, 2026. The page supplies the publisher-hosted video embedded above and attributes it to FWC.
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — source social post linked by CBS Miami.
Featured-image note: The image is a true frame from the released FWC body-camera footage published by WPEC/CBS12, not a recreation or unrelated representative image. ThinBlueNews resized the complete 16:9 frame and added narrow neutral side padding for its 1200 × 630 social-image format; it did not synthesize, remove or add people, boats or incident details.
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