The U.S. Coast Guard is asking for the public’s help identifying the source of a series of fake distress calls radioed between Friday and Sunday.

The agency received multiple calls on VHF channel 16, a radio frequency reserved for emergencies, the Guard’s Northern New England sector said in a statement Sunday evening. In the calls, an unknown person claimed to be in a vessel taking on water, and abandoning ship.

The calls are believed to have come from the same person and general location, near Mount Desert Island and Great Cranberry Island in the town of Southwest Harbor, the Coast Guard said in the statement.

Responding to the fake calls, officials “dispatched multiple resources and conducted hours of active searching,” the Coast Guard said.

Faking a distress call is a federal crime and can carry penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment and $250,000 in fines, the Coast Guard said.

In 2021, a Rockland man, Nathan Libby, pleaded guilty to making a false distress call in late 2020.

The U.S. District Court of Maine sentenced Libby to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $17,500 to the Coast Guard, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a 2021 statement.

The agency is asking anyone with information about the calls to contact the Coast Guard Investigative Service on its website or via the CGIS Tips mobile app.