“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”

That short radio message back on May 14, 2014 had Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville scramble to get rescue crews to the Flagler Beach area.

After two hours of searching, a call came in from a Flagler Beach boat yard.

Someone overheard an employee there make that call.

There was no mayday.

It's just one of more than 100 suspected hoax maydays the US Coast Guard gets nationwide each year.

As we head into the heart of Florida's boating season, Chief Petty Officer Andrew Cohen said it's not just his agency affected by these false calls.

“With the Intracoastal Waterway, the rivers and our off-shore capabilities, we rely on the counties and local police agencies quite a bit and it also puts them out there and takes them away from their other responsibilities as well.”

There have even been instances where Coast Guard crews have been caught up in the disturbing trend called SWATing.

“I've been in other areas throughout the country where we have caught legitimate hoaxes," Cohen said. "We have caught people with the radio in their hand actually.”...using a mayday call to bring a helicopter flying over their house to impress friends.

Yet another source of many of these false calls come from the same source of false 911 calls.

The Coast Guard released a short emergency call of a child saying, "we're stuck in the ocean. We need help."

There are a number of instances where parents teach kids how to use the radio in case of an emergency. But when kids start playing around in a boat, they don't understand what they're doing when they make that call.

Chief Petty Officer Cohen said they can't ignore distress calls but he doesn't want to see rescue crews get complacent and lose their edge because they think every rescue call may be unfounded.

If you knowingly make a false distress call, you could get prison time, up to $250,000 in fines and have to pay the Coast Guard for costs while responding to the call.