Just heard this on the 10am news.  they played the mayday call with the guy saying they were taking on water fast and expected to abandon the boat within 40-50 minutes.  From the article above, that was obviously last night.

Hope it ends well.

well the way i see it is if they are out that deep and takin on water i dunno wat their lookin for the boat for, itl be on the bottom of the ocean, need to be lookin for debris and survivors. but they no wat there doin i guess.

set off their epirb?  Sounds a bit suss to me, hope its not a hoax call?

talked to the sea rescue boys at two rocks this morning - had been out all night with no sign - sounds very suss but hopefully it is a hoax, not much chance of finding them in todays sea.

There was police and rescue boats of the coast at two rocks this morning.

6 boats, a helicopter and a plane are searching.  They say they do not know who made the call or what type of boat they are looking for because there are no records for Sea Dolphin 2.  The news station played the actual mayday call and it sounded genuine, but who's to know. 

of one needs an EPIRB. One can only assume that they did not have one.

If that's the case than they have certainly learnt the hard way, not good at all. 

I hope they checked for C-Dolphin and See-Dolphin,I have no doubt they did,so lets hope it was some anchor (with a W) playing about.jersey

http://seagifts.com/seado770iial.html

T O M O R R O W   N E V E R   D I E S
Under a beautiful blue sky, the gleaming white SEA DOLPHIN II sits at
      dock, festooned with pennants and banners. There's a crowd onboard.
      At the same time, however, 500 feet away.

Been following this a bit on my scanner down in the shed today and it now appears it may be a hoax according to some of the radio chatter.

Cheers
Dale

Just woke up after being on the search last night (Whitfords Sea Rescue). Got the call around 9.50pm and finally got home at 7.30am this morning after crew change. Sounds a bit sus as they if they had 45 min before abandonong vessel why did they not give more details such as GPS, they knew they were 40nm Nth of Rotto. Why was no epirb set off or any parra flares. Also there was a yacht in the area that did not hear the call. problem is we must take each call seriously. Unfortunately we had already completed 5 rescues yesterday and was only home 3 hours so it was a long 24 hours.

If this was sick hoax,and they are caught they should be charged with everything possible and have to foot the bill for the rescue efforts.

Putting other peoples lives at risk for a laugh.......tossers.

I agree if this is a hoax they should fit the bill and some criminal charges to go along with it as well,plus a public apology to all that helped with the rescue call.

couldnt agree more with the last 2 comments, sea rescue put their time and effort into helping others out that need it , they dont need the extra work with people that play games, they are doing this off their own back and dont get a cent out of it , if the pranksters get caught (i hope they do)there would be a huge bill in the mail if it were up to me . man hours and machine hours would add up to a nice tidy sum 

Unfortunatley it starting to look like a hoax call , hopefully the Police might be able to source who and where it came from and if it does turn out to be a legitimate hoax  they should hang him out to dry and use him as an example in front of the public and throw the book at him as a warning to others, what a total waste of resources and goodwill from the rescue groups.

just heard on the radio then apparently they have identified the person who made the mayday call, hopefully they throw the books at him, charge him and make him pay for all the costs involved

I also heard they have the name of a likely suspect, who has allegedly done this before.

Also heard about a hoax in Karratha in Dec 2007 whereby a mayday call came in saying five people were on a burning boat 78kms off Karratha and then a following call saying boat was going down with five people in the water including a pregnant woman.  Apart from the usual, a Royal Australian Navy boat was called in to assist.

Turned out to be an 18 and 24yr old sitting on a boat in their Karratha yard.  They were fined $45,000 each and the radio guy said as far as he could ascertain this morning that the fine has not been paid.  Unfortunately I couldn't hang around for the end of the show so there may have been more info I missed.

apparently 7 will be showing his arrest on the 6 oclock news. someone recognized his voice from the recording played on the news last nite and contacted police

hope they lock the little b@rstard up.

guys like him cause others to die when a real call goes out and then gets thought of as another hoax.
When will a judge have the balls to put a prick like this that makes hoax calls away for a period of time and makes him pay the $48k back that was wasted on the search.

Actually send him down to the ramp and let a few of us taking him out and dump him 20km behind Rotto with a life-vest and leave him there for the night to see what hell it's like to be really lost at sea.
This is emotional for me as we as a family have lost a loved one at sea in a sinking back in the 80's!

Fire bugs and hoax caller would be strung up if I could have my way.

Have been advised he will in Joondalup Court tomorrow. Myself an some of the other volunteers that were involved in the search will be attending so the judge can see us and not take any of his crap about how bad his life is. We also have families and if something happened to us what would they do. Hope he rots in hell!!!!!!!