Coast Guard Stops Searching for Missing Diver

JUPITER, Florida (13 Dec 2007, Fl Today) — The Coast Guard stopped searching for Nikki Cuomo after four days.

Her parents and friends stopped after three months and more than $10,000.

They have come to accept that the Rockledge scuba diver, teacher and counselor will never be found.

"We are officially saying she's missing and dead," her father, Robert Brater, said. "Something serious must have happened under water."

Cuomo failed to resurface from a 100-foot dive Sept. 22. She was diving with a friend about four miles off Jupiter Inlet. She was 38.

The Coast Guard suspended its search the following night after scanning 2,080 square miles.

It resumed its search on Sept. 24 after two private planes spotted a yellow dive buoy 30 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral, about 120 miles or so north of where she was last seen.

The Coast Guard sent a helicopter from Savannah, Ga., a Falcon jet from Miami and a Coast Guard cutter to search the area, but couldn't find her.

Fellow divers, friends and family coordinated their own search, using private planes and boats and the skills of technical divers Cuomo had known for years. People from as far away as Hawaii donated money to the cause, Brater said.

Only her spear gun was recovered.

In the end, they spent more than $10,000 of the $20,000 people donated, he said.

After a small memorial service, the remaining money will be used to create a fund to search for other missing divers.

"We want to make diving safer," he said.

Theories abound about her disappearance, including equipment malfunction, oxygen toxicity and bull shark attack, her father said.

"We believe her dive gear is holding her down somewhere," Brater said.

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She'll also be missed at Incredible Horizons Academy in Melbourne, where she was the school's psychologist and behavioral therapist.

The school had a memorial service and has a Web page set up for students and parents to post their feelings.

"All the kids loved her," said Russ Fales, the school's admissions director. "She was so involved in so many kids' lives, it's just totally unbelievable that she could be gone all of a sudden."