Search-and-rescue broadcasts: distress, overdue and man overboard
Written by seahazards · updated 2026-09-24 · numbers recounted nightly
Some warnings are not about hazards at all but about people: a beacon alert nobody has answered, a yacht days late into port, a crew member lost over the side. They turn every ship nearby into a searcher.
What the broadcast asks
A search-and-rescue broadcast describes what the rescue centre knows — the vessel, its colour and size, the number of people on board, the last known position — and ends with the standard request: vessels in the vicinity are asked to keep a sharp lookout, assist if possible and report to the named centre.
The request has weight behind it. Under SOLAS Chapter V, regulation 33, a master who receives information that persons are in distress at sea must go to their assistance if able to do so.
28,264 messages use it, 1 of them in force now; most often in North Pacific Ocean, South China Sea, North Atlantic Ocean.
Where the alerts come from
Many broadcasts start with an electronic alert: a 406 MHz distress beacon picked up by the Cospas-Sarsat satellites, or a digital selective calling alert on a ship's radio, that the rescue centre cannot resolve. Others start with a phone call from family or owners about a vessel that has not arrived.
Many of these cases end quickly — a false alert, a late arrival, a crew found safe — and the broadcast is cancelled. The cancellation is usually the only sign of the outcome in the record, and it rarely says what happened.
The details in a broadcast are there to help a passing ship recognise what it sees: the length and rig of a yacht, the colour of its hull, the number of people aboard, the route it was sailing and when it was last heard from. A case that runs for days is often reissued with a new position or new details, each message cancelling the one before, so the chain of messages shows how the information changed — not what happened on board.
11,418 messages use it; most often in North Pacific Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, South Pacific Ocean.
Why seahazards waits 30 days
Search-and-rescue broadcasts concern real people at the worst moment of their lives. seahazards therefore shows them only once a case has been closed for 30 days, as part of the incidents archive, and never while a search may be under way. They are shown as the record of a broadcast, not as an account of what happened.
30,597 messages classified as distress & casualty cases (archived) were issued from 1997 to 2026; the largest yearly count is 2017, with 2,188. Collection is incomplete between 2024-05 and 2026-08-17. Counts are messages, not incidents.