Transportation

“You look out on the ocean, and it looks huge. It looks like there’s space for anybody or anything out there.

“But,” says Steve Harbell, “really there’s a lot going on.”

Take, for example, crabbers and ocean-going towboats. Historically, the two have not mixed well off the Pacific coast. Dungeness crab fishermen typically set 400 to 500 pots in the waters off Washington’s coast. Multiply that by 228 fishermen, and you get a thicket of buoys attached by monofilament to the pots 50 to 250 feet below.

That same ocean, near shore, is a towboat highway over which huge boats towing barges laden with various … » More …