Ship stations in receipt of Distress alert should not defer acknowledgement for a short interval, so that receipt may be acknowledged by the coast station.

A Coast station has the sole obligation to respond. A ship station should wait for the Coast station MMSI DSC Acknowledgment before taking action. If a Coast station has no response in 15 minutes the ship should DSC acknowledge and inform the RCC.

A ship station that receives a Distress call from another vessel must, as soon as possible, inform the Master or person responsible for the ship of the contents of the Distress communications received .

Alerts concerning navigational hazards are second only to Safety traffic.