Two Divers Were Trapped 300 Feet Inside a Flooded Cave in Florida With 40 Minutes of Air Left. I’m the Man They Call When the Rescue Is Probably Already Too Late

The sheriff’s deputy didn’t say hello.

“Reese. Ginnie Springs. Two divers in the Devil’s Eye. They went in at nine. They were supposed to be out at ten.”

I looked at the clock on my truck’s dashboard.

It was 11:10.

“How much air did they take?”

“One tank each. Recreational.”

My stomach dropped.

I’m Reese Cutler. I’m 44, single, and I run a small dive shop in High Springs, Florida. I teach cave diving. I fill tanks. I sell masks to tourists.

And about four times a year, the sheriff calls me to go into a cave and bring somebody out.

Usually, they’re not alive.

North Florida sits on top of a limestone sponge. Under the beautiful turquoise springs where families swim in summer, there are miles of underwater caves. Narrow tunnels. Silt that turns the water to chocolate milk with one kick of a fin. No way up. Only back.

Cave diving is the most dangerous kind of diving there is. People who go in without training, with the wrong gear, without a guideline, die there almost every year.

I’ve brought out eleven of them.

I’ve brought out three alive.

When I pulled into Ginnie Springs, a girl of about twenty was sitting on the dock with a towel around her shoulders, shaking. She was the one who’d stayed outside.

“My brother,” she said. “And his friend. They said they’d only go in a little way.”

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Owen.”

I started pulling on my gear.

“How much air would one recreational tank give them in there?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

She saw my face.

“Tell me,” she said.

Sixty minutes. Maybe seventy if they stayed calm.

They’d been down for two hours and ten minutes.