GHA
Well-Known Member
Formal maritime traffic, yes. So if you're going to talk to a container ship or a pelagic trawler, it will be on the marine bands..........However, presumably for historical reasons, most of the yachtsmen's social and support nets are on the ham bands.
Actually it's probably the reverse, around the atlantic anyway. In the USA there is no marine ssb exam requirements, just fill in the form and hand over the money so there are a lot more people with marine SSB callsigns than there are with Ham. More day to day activity seems to happen on the marine SSB frequencies, though there are nets on both SSB & Ham.
http://www.docksideradio.com/east_coast.htm