Coast Guard Officials Detail What They Say Is Bogus Distress Call "We have 21 souls on board, 20 in the water," a man can be heard saying in part of a radio call released by the Coast Guard on Tuesday. I have three deceased on board, nine injured because of the explosion we've had. I'm in three feet of water on the bridge. I'm going to stand by the radio as long as I can before I have to go overboard. The call on Monday, describing a scene of horror and panic at sea, prompted a major rescue response. Except, officials said, it was all fake. Coast Guard officials said on Tuesday that they were offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the person believed to have made a radio call falsely reporting that a yacht was sinking in the Atlantic Ocean east of Sandy Hook, N.J. While such bogus marine distress calls are not unusual, officials said the one made on Monday was the biggest in the area in at least five years, in terms of how many boats and helicopters responded. The Coast Guard was able to determine that two separate pleas for help, reporting that a yacht called Blind Date had suffered an explosion that had injured passengers, were placed over a radio that was most likely on land, said Capt. Gregory P. Hitchen, a deputy Coast Guard commander in New York. He added that officials were able to see the general area the calls came from and believed they were made from Staten Island or a nearby part of New Jersey, but could not be more precise. Four Coast Guard helicopters and two boats began searching the area near Sandy Hook, Capt. Hitchen said. They were assisted by the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department, who provided helicopters and boats. The New Jersey State Police and the Nassau County police also participated. About 200 people searched 638 square nautical miles, Capt. Hitchen said. The Coast Guard placed the initial cost of the operation at about $88,000, he said, and expected that figure to rise. The fake calls, said Capt. Hitchen, had placed both searchers and the public at risk. "It's always dangerous to launch a helicopter over the Atlantic Ocean for a search," he said. More importantly, we diverted several first responders in the area from standby for actual search and rescue cases into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to look for a vessel that had not sunk. The first call to the Coast Guard came at 4:20 p.m. over radio channel 14, which is not generally used to report emergencies at sea, and stated that seven out of 21 passengers had been injured in an explosion aboard the Blind Date. Everyone on board was abandoning the craft, the caller said, and getting onto life rafts. A second transmission, officials said, reported that three people aboard the yacht had died and others had suffered second- and third-degree burns. People convicted of making a false distress call face up to 10 years in prison a $250,000 fine and must reimburse to the Coast Guard for the cost of any. The Coast Guard provided details on five cases since 2004 in which defendants pleaded guilty to making false distress calls. Those defendants were given prison sentences of up to two years and ordered to pay restitution ranging from $56,000 to $194,000. The first Coast Guard district, which covers the six New England states and parts of New York and New Jersey receives about 300 hoax calls per year, said Capt. Hitchen, adding that the Coast Guard and other authorities responded to about 60 fake calls in the areas around northern New Jersey and New York in 2011. He said that officials are often able to figure out quickly when a call for help is a fake. The call on Monday, however, sounded real. "There was a certain amount of detail in the call that we don't normally encounter in hoax calls," Capt. Hitchen said. He had a specific number of people that he had on board, he was pretty specific on who has injuries, he was giving us a blow by blow on how his pilothouse was filling up with water. Coast Guard officials determined that the call was a hoax after searchers were unable to find wreckage, life rafts or an oil slick near the reported spot of the explosion. Capt. Hitchen said that the Coast Guard received a similar fake call almost exactly a year ago, when an unknown caller from the same general area said that a fishing boat was sinking.