The coastguard, along with the US and Mexican navies, deployed aircraft and ships to help the stricken vessel, which was drifting about 55 miles off the coast of northern Baja.
Newer radios have a button labeled "DSC" (Digital Select Calling), which transmits the GPS coordinates to the coastguard along with a Mayday beacon.
But beyond the destruction of specific boats, conversations with smugglers, refugees and coastguards along the shores of west Libya suggest there are other, more long-term strategies for curbing the flow of people across the Mediterranean.
The Shoreham and Newhaven coastguard rescue teams, along with lifeboats from Shoreham, Newhaven and Brighton, are all involved with the search, along with the coastguard helicopter from Lee-on-Solent".
The local Lytham St Anne Coastguard Rescue Team, along with three RNLI lifeboats - two from Lytham St Anne's and one from Blackpool - are involved in the search of the three-mile search area.
The agency said coastguard rescue teams, along with police and firefighters, had been sent to establish the extent of the fall.
The Thurso lifeboat is now also on its way to provide assistance along with the coastguard tugboat Herakles.
The bodies of two more babies were recovered by the Turkish coastguard in the Izmir province on Tuesday along with seven dead adults, just days after another 37 people drowned off another part of the coast.
On a recent night, as the yachts swayed gently and disco music wafted out from the bars along the harbour, a Turkish coastguard vessel, working with a team of volunteer divers, brought in 95 refugees, mostly Syrian, whose boat had capsized in the Aegean.
Sleeps three, £595 a week in July/August, £395 low season, 01573 226711, crabtreeandcrabtree.com Woodland hideaway: DEVON One of a row of three 18th-century dwellings built for officers tasked with catching smugglers along the wild Devon coast, Coastguard Cottage 3 is a few minutes from rocky Peppercombe beach and surrounded by woods.
The Italian coastguard has released footage of the boat, along with others it rescued over the weekend as Alan Johnston reports.
