Thanks for the question.
Normally when a distress call is heard, it's through our marine communications and traffic services centres, and it gets relayed to the joint rescue coordination centre. They gather the information, analyze, and determine that it's a search and rescue call. Then the tasking is issued to both the air unit and the marine unit, and a vessel or patrol ship may end up being there.
From that time on, from the Coast Guard perspective, our reaction time is 30 minutes, and I can say that in the last five years, the average reaction time has been just over 10 minutes.
We then have to get to the scene, which depends on the weather and where it is. Depending on the case, if it's a vessel in trouble, it's easily identified, communication is ongoing, and so there's no search. If it's somebody who's lost at sea, then there's a search pattern that needs to take place. So, it will vary a lot.
I can tell you that, on average, our reaction time has been 10 minutes. I would say that 80% of the time we're on-site within an hour.