If my chopper crashed when we're off of Hawaii then I'd be hoping the local SAR agency would come and look for me rather than not bother since I'm a foreigner. Same deal here.
Except that when you crash your chopper the ELT goes off so everyone has a good idea where you are.
In this instance a multi million dollar aircraft crashes with multiple ELT's and NONE of them work, so we start doing grid patterns all over the ocean?