Educational reference only — not medical advice and not training. Call 911, or hail the Coast Guard on VHF channel 16 if you have no signal. Every step below is quoted from the public guidance of the organisation linked beside it (AHA, American Red Cross, CDC, USCG, NWS, DAN, America’s Poison Centers). This page is saved on your phone and reads with no signal.
Ambulance, fire, police. Call it first for anything life-threatening, the moment you have a bar of signal.
Note: Text-to-911 exists, but whether it works depends on your county — where it is not supported, the message simply fails. Voice is the reliable path.
Source: FCC — text-to-911 — https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-you-need-know-about-text-911
The Coast Guard distress channel — and the only reliable emergency link on open water with no cell signal. Hail MAYDAY for imminent danger to life or the vessel.
Full MAYDAY script, channels and radio checks
Source: USCG Boating — https://uscgboating.org
Poison Control, staffed around the clock. Call for marine stings, eating a fish that turns out to be toxic, and fuel or chemical exposure.
Source: poisonhelp.org — https://poisonhelp.org
911 and Poison Control (1-800-222-1222) are one tap to dial on the live page. VHF channel 16 is a radio call, not a phone call — the full script is next.
Sources: USCG Boating, BoatUS — calling for help
911 if you have signal, VHF 16 if you do not. Start the steps while someone else makes the call.
For an adult who has collapsed and is not breathing normally. Send someone else to call 911 or hail VHF 16 while you start — you keep pushing.
One exception, and it is the one that matters on the water: a drowning is NOT hands-only. See the next section before you need it.
A drowning is an oxygen problem, not a heart problem — and that changes the CPR. This is the single most important section on this page for anyone who fishes.
Never — do not do any of this:
Get to care: Anyone who needed resuscitation — or who afterwards is coughing, short of breath, complaining of chest pain, or not thinking clearly — needs to be evaluated at an ER. Symptoms usually appear within 2–6 hours.
A propeller, a fillet knife or a gaff can open a bleed that kills in minutes. Pressure first, always.
After a high-speed impact, a hard fall in the boat, or a dive into shallow water.
Get to care: Unconscious after a head injury, or any numbness, tingling or weakness in the arms or legs: treat it as a spinal injury until a professional says otherwise.
This one kills boaters and almost nobody knows it. Carbon monoxide has no colour and no smell, and it pools in dead-air pockets at the stern and inside cabins when you idle or run slow.
Never — do not do any of this:
Act now and keep watching them.
On a Gulf flat in August this is the likeliest thing on this page to happen to you. The two look similar and only one is a 911 call.
The tell: The quick tell: exhaustion gives a weak pulse and cold, clammy skin. Stroke gives a strong pulse and a person who is not thinking straight.
Heat exhaustion
Signs:
Do this:
Heat stroke — call 911 — this is the 911 call
Signs:
Do this:
Get to care: Call 911 for any confusion or fainting, or if they are vomiting and cannot keep water down.
1-10-1 is the number to remember when you go in: one minute to get your breathing under control, ten minutes of useful movement to self-rescue, one hour of useful consciousness.
Never — do not do any of this:
The Gulf Coast one. A small cut in warm salt water can go bad in hours, not days — and it does not look dramatic at first.
Much higher risk:
If that is you, treat every saltwater cut as serious and get it seen early rather than late.
Go to an ER now — any one of these:
Get to care: Untreated, this can progress to necrotizing fasciitis and sepsis. Spreading redness or a fever after a saltwater wound is an emergency-room trip, not a wait-and-see.
You are the tallest thing on a flat surface. Get small and get off the metal.
Never — do not do any of this:
Treat it, then watch for infection or worsening.
Heat is the treatment. The venom is protein-based and hot water breaks it down, which is also why it kills the pain.
Get to care: A spine or barb that broke off inside the wound needs professional removal — left in, it becomes a chronic infection. Any spreading redness or fever, see the saltwater-infection section above.
Hardheads and gafftopsail cats carry venom glands in the dorsal and pectoral spines. Same treatment as a ray; the difference is what happens afterwards.
Get to care: The pain passes; infection is the real threat. These spines are barbed and break off easily — a retained spine needs a professional to remove it, or it turns into a chronic infection or a granuloma.
Authoritative sources disagree on this one. Both positions are below with their own sources.
Official sources genuinely disagree about the rinse, so this page tells you who says what instead of pretending it is settled.
Never — do not do any of this:
Position: Vinegar — DAN and the Red Cross generally support vinegar to deactivate the stingers, and recent research in Toxins (University of Hawaii / DAN) supports vinegar for Portuguese man-o-war specifically.
Position: Seawater only — Other current guidance holds that vinegar can trigger discharge in Portuguese man-o-war (Physalia) and recommends rinsing with seawater alone.
The decision that matters is whether to touch it at all.
Never — do not do any of this:
Where this page stops: Honest limit: the sources we could verify describe hook removal as a clinical procedure, not as a layperson technique. If you have any doubt, leaving the hook in and getting to a doctor is the safer call — see the saltwater-infection section, because marine wounds infect readily.
Never — do not do any of this:
Get to care: Call 911 if they are confused, or if they have stopped sweating in the heat.
Never — do not do any of this:
Every Gulf and near-Gulf state protects a bystander who helps in good faith and for free. The wording differs, and so does what voids the protection.
Ala. Code § 6-5-332 — If you help in good faith and without being paid, at the scene of an accident or emergency, you are immune from civil liability.
Limits:
Worth knowing: The general bystander protection is broad; separate subsections deal with mine rescue and public health emergencies.
Fla. Stat. § 768.13 — The "Good Samaritan Act" protects anyone who gives emergency care or treatment gratuitously and in good faith.
Limits:
La. Rev. Stat. § 9:2793 — Give emergency care, first aid or rescue in good faith and for free at the scene, and you are not liable for civil damages.
Limits:
Worth knowing: Louisiana is the one that explicitly names "rescue" — which covers moving someone — and it reaches the scene, a hospital, and transport in between.
Miss. Code Ann. § 73-25-37 — You are immune if you give emergency care at the scene in good faith and in the exercise of reasonable care.
Limits:
Worth knowing: It explicitly covers transporting the injured person to where medical help can reasonably be expected, and its AED subsection applies whether or not you were compensated.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 74.151 — Administer emergency care in good faith and you are not civilly liable for what you did during the emergency.
Limits:
Worth knowing: Texas explicitly extends protection to using an AED and to volunteer first responders. It does not create a duty to rescue.
Plain-language summaries of public statutes, not legal advice. These laws reduce your exposure when you help in good faith — they do not eliminate it, and the details differ by state. If a specific incident matters to you, talk to a lawyer licensed in your state.
A hands-on CPR and first aid course is a few hours, and it is the one thing on this page that actually changes an outcome.
Learn the radio on the VHF & MAYDAY guide, and carry the gear the law requires with boat safety & the float plan.
Educational reference only. This is not medical advice, it is not training, and it is not a substitute for calling 911 or hailing the Coast Guard on VHF channel 16. Tides & Tails is not a medical provider, nobody here is on duty, and nobody is dispatched. Everything on this page is quoted from the public guidance of the organisation linked beside it — where those organisations disagree, this page says so instead of choosing for you. Protocols get revised, so the linked source is always more current than this page. Reading is not the same as training: take a hands-on CPR and first aid course from the American Heart Association or the American Red Cross. Use at your own risk.