Not necessarily; after all, such a beacon will only let the world know that someone, somewhere is in the water; depending on where they fell in, rescue personnel may need days to get to the site if it is sufficiently remote and the weather is bad enough.

The main benefit of a PLB is to assist the vessel you fell from in finding you - unless you had the good luck to fall overboard near a heliport in decent weather or in a busy shipping lane, the PLB will (mostly) not be able to get a rescue effort by any other party under way in time.

> Thank you. So it is a case of people planning poorly. :(

Well most of them were picked up by another fishing vessel, probably because of a VHF radio distress call and not a ELB/PLB. Those devices often depend on reception by overflying commercial aircraft, which are bound by international treaty to monitor the frequencies and forward reports to land-based authorities. Others use satellite reception. Such beacons are the method of last resort when far from land and not in the company of other nearby vessels, and it can take quite awhile for responders to get the report and make it out to the area.