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| News Release |
Date: Contact: |
| Coast Guard continues search for four missing boaters |
| CLEARWATER, Fla. - The Coast Guard continues its search for four missing boaters about 50 miles west of Clearwater Pass Sunday.
Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg, Fla., received a call at about 1: 30 a.m., Sunday, reporting that four friends, Victor "Marquis" Cooper, Nick Skyler, Corey Smith and William Bleakley did not return from their fishing trip as expected. The four boaters left at about 6:30 a.m., Saturday, from the Seminole Boat Ramp in Clearwater Pass, in a 21-foot center console boat. Two Coast Guard H-60 Jayhawk helicopter crews and a C-130 Hercules fixed-wing aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, the cutters Crocodile and Nantucket, and two Air Force helicopters are searching a 750-square mile area west of Clearwater Pass for the missing boaters. An Urgent Mariner Information Broadcast (UMIB) is also being transmitted on marine VHF radio channel 16. If anyone has any information regarding this case they are asked to call Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg at or by marine VHF radio channel 16.
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