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.