ABSTRACT
Marine VHF radios are the primary medium for communication between vessels in coastal waters and between vessels and shore facilities.2 They are standard equipment on commercial vessels, and widely but not universally installed on recreational vessels. Unlike CB radio, marine VHF radio is not intended as a folk medium. It is used for official communications by law enforcement (the Coast Guard, marine police and harbormasters), in search and safety operations, by towing/salvage services, and commercial operations in coastal waters (drawbridge operators, port operations and traffic control). There are prescribed protocols and language-drawn from long-standing procedures for signaling at sea-for hailing other stations, repeating information, acknowledging transmissions and ending them, requesting priority on a channel, prefacing messages to index their urgency, pronouncing some words and numbers (“see-lonce” for silence and “niner” for nine) and pronouncing letters when spelling (“Alpha,” “Bravo”…“Yankee” “Zulu”), and so on.3 And the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has designated for whom, or for what purpose, each of a marine VHF radio’s approximately 55 talk-receive channels is reserved (including two channels for hailing, one for search and safety, one channel for digitized emergency broadcasts, six channels for the Coast Guard, eleven channels for port operations and traffic control, ten channels for commercial users, six channels for marinas and recreational boaters, and nine channels for connecting to a landside telephone line).
