Makes total sense. People who haven't spent time on the ocean have no idea how hard it is to see someone amoungst the waves.

Many years ago, while in school, I spent some time on oceanographic vessels. I still vividly remember one day when we were trying to find and recover a small floating instrument (roughly a meter in size). This was in the pre-GPS era, but we had a small radio beacon and a short mast with an orange flag on it. Because of the radio beacon we knew we were very close to it, but we still had the devil of a time finding that thing. In even a very moderate sea state it was extremely hard to spot.