Tractor Driver - I'm not sure the civvy SAR kit is quite as capable as that. 16 beacons going off at once is going to cause problems for anyone and, chances are, if it is a survivable crash, you will all be close by the aircraft or already in dinghies so location would probably be done visually not electronically.
If we were conducting an IMC homing to multiple contacts, we would still be able to let down to the area since we would get an electronic overhead of some sort. Thereafter, as every survivor is brought into the aircraft, his beacon is switched off/destroyed leaving us clear to find the others.
I think the oil and gas industry likes individual beacons simply because they give its customers a warm and fuzzy feeling that they won't be forgotten.