At the tail end of a delivery last summer, early into a night watch NW of St. Petersburg, I heard some radio traffic between a vessel and USCG concerning aerial flares sighted. Didn't catch any details. An hour or so later, I sighted what could have been a parachute flare, but wasn't sure due to haze. A short while later, another went up. I called it in and changed heading to investigate. Over the next hour, I sighted several more. CG wanted color, trajectory, rise time, fall time, total time observed, and several more data points on each flare. They computed a cone of visibility and launched a helo, which flew a search grid. Never found anything that I know of, but they sure took it seriously.
