Mark Zuckerberg hammered after ignoring distress call for stranded vessel: report

Billionaire and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hit with “unanimous booing” this week for reportedly ignoring a request from the U.S. Coast Guard to rescue a stranded sea vessel from his $300 million yacht, the Alaska Beacon reported Saturday.

“I’m on a small-ship Alaska cruise with my son,” reads a social media post from Michael Love, a New York software developer. “Our boat rescued a stranded vessel last night and apparently we did that after the Coast Guard radioed Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht – which was closer – and they repeatedly refused to respond. (There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this).”

According to vessel tracking services reviewed by the Alaska Beacon, Love’s account appeared accurate, confirming that Zuckerberg’s yacht was “slowing to a halt outside Farragut Bay,” a five-mile wide bay in southern Alaska, south of its capital city, Juneau.

Love claimed the stranded vessel – known as the Uncruise Wilderness Legacy – had two women, a child and a dog onboard and was “going too far with too little gas.”

“We gave them some [gas] and helped find an anchorage for the night,” Love wrote in a follow-up social media post.

When asked by the Alaska Beacon, Love said it was puzzling as to why the crew of Zuckerberg’s yacht ignored the Coast Guard’s radio call.

“Frankly, if I was Mark Zuckerberg I would be absolutely ecstatic at a chance to do something helpful for someone in need and maybe get some good PR out of it,” Love said.

Zuckerberg has faced scrutiny for his apparent alignment with President Donald Trump and his administration in recent years.

Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the 2024 election, praised Trump’s reaction to his first assassination attempt as “bad—,” and restored Trump’s Facebook account following its post-Jan. 6 suspension. He later sat beside Trump at a September 2025 White House dinner for tech executives, where Meta pledged at least $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure investment through 2028, and in March 2026, Trump named Zuckerberg to his newly formed Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.