SCUBA Mayday VHF/ch. 16

The audio on this channel 16 VHF mayday broadcast is frightening and instructive.

A scuba diver has failed to surface and the topside caller, the diver's boyfriend, makes a frantic mayday on channel 16.

Swept away by the wind and tide in Fishers Island Sound, Connecticut after letting go of the dive boat's anchor line to retrieve dropped gear, the diver went missing and was drowned. She slipped below the surface before replacing her respirator into her mouth.

The audio is worth listening to despite - or, perhaps better, because of - its garbled distortion, repeats, and confusion and miscommunication.

The caller makes his call while trying to track the diver as she is swept away.

He hauls anchor, follows her bubble trail, and tries to keep his powerboat over her submerged location after she has sunk from view. He then loses the bubble trail.

All the while he tries to maintain communications with the Coast Guard.

His fear and panic are understandable. As he shouts into the mic, his call produces an audio artifact known as clipping, or the distortion you hear as his voice volume exceeds the capacity of the mic.

You can detect the radio watchstander's difficulty in gathering accurate information as to where the accident is taking place.

It's not clear to her who or what is involved, and that the missing woman is, in fact, a scuba diver who hasn't surfaced.

Finally you'll note that another vessel in the area, monitoring channel 16, breaks in to clarify the nature of the emergency for the watchstander. He clarifies that this is a missing scuba diver, and that the caller's boat is a Downeaster. In short time numerous other good Samaritan vessels become involved, until nearly 40 divers were involved for the search for the missing diver.

You'll hear one of the nearby vessels offer to provide assistance.

That's one of the benefits of vhf channel 16: since any vessel with a fixed-mount vhf radio is required to monitor channel 16 while underway, maydays are broadcast across a vast web that may (or may not) contain dozens if not hundreds of nearby mariners.

One key to remember about maydays is that though we may be in a justifiable panic, we need to do our best to speak slowly, calmly, clearly.

Otherwise we run the risk of making the watchstander's job more difficult, likely leading to the loss of response time.

Listen to more VHF radio audio:
VHF radio mayday false distress call (caller was later indicted and jailed)
VHF radio pan-pan (caller is switched to channel 22a by the Coast Guard)
VHF radio mayday (grounded vessel's call is picked up by two Coast Guard stations)
VHF radio mayday (sinking vessel gives only broad local descriptors)
VHF radio's utility in seakayakers' rescue by Coast Guard helicopter

audio courtesy US Coast Guard; mashup and text copyright North American Kayak Fishing