Advances in search and rescue at sea

A topical collection on Advances in Search and Rescue at Sea has appeared in recent issues of Ocean Dynamics following the latest in a series of workshops on Technologies for Search and Rescue and other Emergency Marine Operations (2004, 2006, 2008, and 2011), hosted by IFREMER in Brest, France. Here, we give a brief overview of the history of search and rescue at sea before we summarize the main results of the papers that have appeared in the topical collection.