Weird And Annoying Radio Calls On VHF Channel 16 At Sea

VHF Channel 16 is strictly reserved as the International Hailing and Distress channel for all mariners around the world. It is to be used only for Emergency (Mayday), Urgency (Pan-Pan), and Safety (Securite) calls, or to hail other vessels before switching to a different working frequency. Many country's Coast Guards will monitor the use of this channel to ensure it is being used solely for these purposes. Unfortunately, parts of the world do not have the same assets to properly monitor this channel. Here is an example of what we often listen to non-stop on the bridge during night hours. This is common everywhere from the Suez Canal on our way to India. I think some mariners are working too long on ships at one time...
#weirdVHF #maritime #lifeatsea

[@Sleepyhead101]

This is the maritime equivalent of random pilots meowing and reporting sport scores on 121.5MHz

[@phant0]

It makes for something entertaining to listen to during long patrol flights though. My two personal favorite moments: - (In thick Indian accent): "Fuck you Chinese fishing ship!" (in reference to those huge fleets of Chinese trawlers that are completely destroying the local ecosystem and fishing industry out there) And: - (Indian accent) "Fishing ship, where are you?" - (Arabic accent) "Right inside your mother my brother!"

[@Napoleon_Blownapart]

When I was sailing around China, there would never be more than 5 seconds of silence on 16. Glad they invented DSC calls or else you wouldnt be able to call anybody if needed.

[@DJVIIIMan]

Sounds like every channel from Baton Rouge to NOLA

[@Lkjkdlnsmd]

This is hilarious. And it’s exactly the same on the emergency frequency for airplanes

[@NathanH172]

Meow

[@Lkjkdlnsmd]

@@NathanH172 you’re on guaaaaaaard!!

[@NathanH172]

@@Lkjkdlnsmd It never fails, or when you’re on short final and a friend is on the ground calling wind check every 30 seconds.

[@johncline7518]

GUAAAAAAARD

[@michaeljulius5895]

I wish I could give you more than one like - this is great!!!

[@BryanBoyle]

Thank you!

[@ryantan2070]

How ignorant. I'd be very angry if I had to deal with that every time I showed up for work. Hang in there!

[@nonsense1430]

Hahhaha

[@chopperboi89]

Sounds like channel 6 on CB, or an HF pirate just below 40M lol

[@bartlamr]

For comparison, this is nearly identical to what the aviation emergency frequency (121.5) sounds like...except there seems to be more "meowing" in the air. Also very annoying to listen to!

[@BryanBoyle]

Haha yea my father is an airline pilot and he told me the same thing today. He said there’s some odd radio chatter over the ocean when he used to fly international. Crazy to think there are people flying airplanes and navigating ships full of cargo worth over 100 million dollars and acting like that

[@philmarq]

@@BryanBoyle I work the same gig as your dad. were you always interested in boats more than planes? there seems to be a connection though, not just in terminology but also I remember when I was in some course back in basic flight training someone from the class asked if we wanted to go sailing that weekend and it turned out everyone in the room had sailing experience

[@stuarthall3874]

This makes me glad for the invention of the squelch.

[@BryanBoyle]

Not even squelch will help you there! The other ships are too close to us..believe me we tried lol

[@TrooperSmithy]

Was happening every night on my last ship in the Mediterranean. Quieten up as soon as we passed Gibraltar

[@abnelrivera208]

Lol I love being on the mid to 4 watch at this area!

[@patrickk9440]

Balls to 4

[@Rusty-GB]

I feel your pain. I used to be in law enforcement prior to retiring and before we went over to encrypted radio systems, during certain months of the year our systems were full of chat from fishing fleets from other countries that were working off our coasts and not adhering to our inshore radio protocol's . Really dangerous as if one of my fellow officers put up an assistance call the chances were we would never hear it.

[@BeenThrDunThat]

Would drive me nuts

[@belesariius]

These guys sound exactly like the ones doing the scam calls from mumbai

[@BryanBoyle]

haha I think you may be right

[@Neo-po2xw]

Mumbai is one of the richest city in India. I'm from India only from different state and I bet it's richest thanks to scam money.

[@angelcarlos8041]

This is funny.. can't wait to witness this once I became a cadet

[@davidbolton4930]

Maybe you show explain how radio channels work eg what channel 16 is and why most bigger boat have 3 plus radios

[@afrinshaju4558]

Haaaa I missed this Ming ming ming so much .....😍

[@markmessiwilliams5578]

Haha i thought thas was hilarious i could listen to that all night 😂😂

[@Zizumia]

Brings back memories lol. I remember we had 16 up on the bridge for monitoring and suddenly they started blasting pornography over the net. The officer of the deck slowly turned the dial down while we all had a nice laugh!

[@robtowen]

sounds like the soundtrack to every Bollywood musical ever made. 💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺

[@peteregan3862]

Give me Bollywood anyday compared to that noise.

[@GardenerTobak]

How do you ever get real calls broadcast for things like emergencies, when you can't even get a word in edgewise? Is there a backup Channel you can call on? Is there a way to jam the Transmissions of these guys who are just messing around or are they doing this intentionally so that you have no way to call out for an emergency if there's a pirate attack?

[@RedLink27]

Thankfully around here, channel 16 is used for its intended purposes, did hear the US coast guard warn two boats to move their conversation off the channel once but other than that it's respected. Outside of 16.. the same can't be said. Hell, I could hear a few local boats discussing mechanical issues AND garbage trucks talking to one another on channel 6 within minutes of each other.

[@vibhavkumar5877]

Can you make a video on "A day in the life of a Deck Cadet" Please.

[@BryanBoyle]

Yes I will try to do one on that in the near future!

[@sailorxyz5000]

Meanwhile you can check mine:) thanks

[@trbarrettjr]

I noticed that you have an RSSI meter on there, do you guys have an RDF array to track the source of the broadcast station?

[@BryanBoyle]

No we don’t have any radio direction finder. RDF did used to be the technology for triangulating our position before GPS though!

[@trbarrettjr]

@@BryanBoyle Good to know! Thank you for the reply!

[@ackrazam]

when this may look weird but you're used to csgo team voice chat

[@MK-tt5xy]

"Yer on Guard!"

[@jerrytugable]

Ha ha, they will never give up..MINKY MINKY 😜

[@artin.f4076]

it’s the same in Persian gulf my father’s a captain and from iran we we get annoyed to i feel you brother because next year i will be cadet and i will go through this too😂

[@CaptainMartinWalker]

Good luck. Man pasdaram

[@nobodysbusiness87]

I guess they never herd what happened to the boy who cried wolf. I say turn the squelch up and let them sink.

[@phillipsmiley5930]

Ch70 DSC has made ch16 unimportant

[@user-MMKS]

Someone goes crazy for a long stay on board😂 0:41 that was russian😀

[@CaptainMartinWalker]

The accent was not. The way he said blyeeeat reminded me of some uzbek working a shawmik

[@dogman3362]

Lol, I just heard it and laughed so hard. He said "Заткнись блять" - "Shut up, dammit"

[@cqdmgy]

Is it compulsory to listen though? I would be annoyed really quick and just turn the volume down to 0, but then you won't hear when there is an actual emergency. Or when Microsoft support calls you to inform you that your computer has a virus I guess.

[@BryanBoyle]

Yes we are required to monitor channel 16. We turn the volume down but still Need to be able to hear real calls or emergencies on this channel.

[@Kosh_Naranek.]

man I miss the fuck out of sailing. If I dont get into seminary Im dusting off my MMC

[@jbond119]

Guuuuaaaard

[@KevinOrtega1980]

Yep been there done that 😂

[@phillipsmiley5930]

In my day Ch 6 156.300 was the FU anything goes channel

[@gauravkumarravi5107]

Hindi Indian songs were also there

[@noobmeister6652]

Ming ming ming ming! 😂

[@ThrilloVanHouten]

"Speaking...Ming Ming"

[@billwareagle7047]

Bryan, I think the Nigerian Prince has $2 million for you just send him $10,000 and he will wire it to you. LOL!!!

[@BryanBoyle]

Haha yea sounds like the same scam calls I get all the time!

[@billwareagle7047]

@@BryanBoyle same here, have you allowed your car warranty to expire? LOL

[@mitchellbarnow1709]

@@billwareagle7047 Ten phone calls per day and all from different area codes and phone numbers, making them impossible to block!

[@billwareagle7047]

@@mitchellbarnow1709 I love talking to them, they get mad at me and hang up.

[@mitchellbarnow1709]

@@billwareagle7047 I do feel bad for those that have to work these jobs to put food on their tables. I've seen videos that show these scam outfits even scam their employees into thinking that they actually work for Microsoft.

[@thecaptainredpants]

MING MING

[@tonyjoe1753]

C O O L !

[@commentorking9943]

Ming ming hehe if you know, u know

[@JohnSmith-uy7sv]

Totally hilarious. Like the old CB days. 🤣

[@barneymm2204]

Old? They're still doing it.

[@keithsummers6139]

that's why i quit CB radio, couldn't talk on it because some dickhead was using it as a music station through massive amplifiers and bleeding over the other channels.

[@jameschen9099]

Bridge deck officers who are licensed with General Operator's Certificate - Marine (GOC-M) should not "Minky" around like that. Can't believe any OOW will allow that to go on under his/her watch !!

[@barneymm2204]

but anybody can get a marine radio. I'm on a mountain in Virginia and there're a couple good-ol-boys that fool around on their marine radio. I catch them on channels 68 or 71 occasionally (esp during hunting season).

[@elien1902]

I'm gonna have nightmares now....only been sailing for 2 years and already traumatised by this shit.

[@phillipsmiley5930]

as long as you have Ch70 DSC you'll be fine

[@pesisawesome5864]

Whose playing those old Bollywood songs 🤣🤣

[@atsea713]

funny for the 1st 3 mins your ever there….then you wanna bash your brains in on the 00-04 the rest of the time.

[@BryanBoyle]

Yeah you’re absolutely right. We have a few laughs with some of the stuff we hear, but after awhile it really gets annoying and even dangerous when we are unable to communicate with other ships in traffic due to it.

[@peteregan3862]

So, it is from ships not land??? Easy to imagine gear having been sold in markets and equipment used for 'fun'.

[@BryanBoyle]

Yes this is from other ships with very bored and irresponsible mariners. We hear this all the time over there even when we are out of VHF range from land!

[@sondrayork6317]

Illegal use of vhf channel 16 right there. Music is never allowed on any channel unless it is within the broadcast bands. I hope the USCG caught the people involved.

[@davidschick6951]

It was in the Gulf of Oman, way outside US jurisdiction.

[@Tmlindable]

Do you think they're just other bored (and maybe drunk) crews on night watch just passing time? I understand it's a no-no, just trying to understand lol

[@BryanBoyle]

Definitely bored, hopefully not drunk but who knows? It’s like the Wild West over there

[@davidbolton4930]

@@BryanBoyle im from a little old fishing boat from New zealand she's 65 meter and if that happened down our way maritime new zealand would bring God down own them and Australia would be the same

[@phant0]

Knowing what's going on on those seas, more likely than not they are also high on hard drugs.

[@nonnobissolum]

Got more than our share of the same kind of d*psh*ts on Ch-16 in San Diego, too.

[@ColtonRMagby]

If I heard chatter on channel 16 that was not related to an emergency, I would tell the people chatting to get off the channel or they'd be in for an unwanted headache.

[@G-Forces2005]

This can literally only happen in the area of Oman or somewhere near China. You bet if you tried this in Dover strait of any straits like that, they would just track you up and give you a huge welcome fine

[@ColtonRMagby]

@@G-Forces2005 That's why I hate non-emergency chatter when an emergency channel is involved.

[@Nea760]

First

[@User-di2od]

Reminds me of CoD lobby

[@RaviRavi-ir7pf]

Those songs were hindi songs(bollywood)

[@axjmd]

Can you pick this transmission up with a shortwave radio and what frequency(ies)?

[@AndrejaKostic]

No. The VHF part gives it away: Shortwave is HF, and there are ultra-short waves (although that term is not commonly used in English). The frequency is 156.8 MHz, if you want to listen to it with a VHF radio, but you're almost certainly only going to hear the local traffic.

[@madmax2069]

There are very few "shortwave" radios that do have the capability of receiving the VHF/UHF bands, one such receiver is the HanRongDa HRD-747 (but it sucks as it doesn't work too well) I'm not counting NOAA weather and air band frequencies even though they're apart of the VHF band, neither will get you to the marine frequencies. You would pretty much need to have an SDR receiver, an all band receiver to be able to receive. Shortwave radios usually only cover 150kHz-30MHz. The cheapest option is to just get an RTL-SDR USB dongle as they cover all the way up to 1.8-1.9GHz VHF is from 30MHz to 300MHz range, marine band frequencies are 156MHz - 174MHz.

[@Anarchy1993]

Too bad your ship isnt equipped with Tomahawks

[@BryanBoyle]

Haha yea tell me about it

[@dineshkumar-ry4cy]

The first song at 0.10 is this kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKrEanduoNGoe5I

[@ravindufernando3313]

this is the huge problem with the Chinees radios... ha ha they transmit all over the band.. all uhf and vhf...

[@alvinquion4433]

Ming Ming Only Filipino Seafarers Can Know That. You Know What I Mean 🤣😅😆... Specialy If You Heard John B. Number 1 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😁😁😁😁

[@jamesa7506]

Hahaha! When you call tech support or customer service...

[@davidschick6951]

waste of valuable airtime

[@marilecescobia391]

Jammer

[@MrHouse93]

isnt marine VHF 16 supposed to be an emergency only channel? WTF is going on in there?

[@BryanBoyle]

Yes CH16 is the international hailing and distress channel. Many parts of the world have coast guards that monitor this channel to prevent abuse like this, but other parts of the world do not which causes issues like this..

[@phillipsmiley5930]

Ch70 DSC has made ch16 unimportant

[@adityarange7685]

Sir the songs were hindi bollywood from India..

[@someguy9778]

Does the coast guard fine these people? I mean, they could locate them if they wanted to.

[@davidschick6951]

They might be outside US jurisdiction.

[@kod593]

So uncivilized.

[@davidbolton4930]

Fuck all that

[@jamespeace5043]

Disgraceful. This is a danger to life at sea

[@BryanBoyle]

Couldn't agree more!

[@JohnSmith-uy7sv]

@@BryanBoyle is 16 an emergency channel on marine band? You got 32, correct?

[@JohnSmith-uy7sv]

@@BryanBoyle Oops, my bad, Channel 16 is used for calling other stations or for distress alerting. Channel 13 should be used to contact a ship when there is danger of collision. All ships of length 20m or greater are required to guard VHF channel 13, in addition to VHF channel 16, when operating within U.S. territorial waters.

[@davidbolton4930]

@@JohnSmith-uy7sv most bigger ship have 3 or so radios so that can listen to channels 16 and 13 plus what ever they uses locally or catching up

[@phillipsmiley5930]

@@JohnSmith-uy7sv Ch70 DSC has superseded CH16

[@seaph2022]

some of them are indians and filipinos sad to say 😔👎

[@spencerbass7142]

Not very entertaining.