Safety at Sea: Vessel Traffic Service San Francisco Celebrating 50 years of Vessel Traffic Services by mr. sCott humPhrey VTS Training Director Sector San Francisco U.S. Coast Guard T he glow of a computer screen illuminated the face of a Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) San Francisco operator on the windowless watch floor. On this Friday afternoon in April 2022, a 564-foot container ship moving goods from the Port of Oakland to Seattle checked into the VTS offshore sector 38 nm from San Francisco Bay. This route cut through the Greater Farallones and the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Something was wrong. The VTS operator noticed the vessel was no longer making forward progress. Querying the vessel, the operator learned that the con- tainer ship lost propulsion more than 12 nm from land and was drifting toward the rocky coast of Point Reyes National Seashore in 50-knot winds and 15-foot seas. In more than 300 feet of water, the vessel continued to drift towards Point Reyes until it was shallow enough to deploy its anchor, which failed to hold. After unsuccess- ful attempts by the ship’s crew to make engine repairs, the ship deployed its second anchor inside the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, within eight nautical miles of land. With 21 souls and approximately 364,000 gallons of potential pollution on board, in addition to 783 containers on deck, the vessel continued to drag anchor, drifting toward Point Reyes National Seashore. The Captain of the Port issued an emergency broad- cast for any available tug assistance. VTS operators diverted a tug toward the vessel, and three additional tugs got underway to make the 38 nm transit in arduous weather. Sector San Francisco established an incident command post and VTS operators monitored the vessel, keeping constant communication over the next 48 hours until weather conditions improved, allowing a towline to be passed to the vessel. The containership was eventu- ally dead-ship towed 38 nm back to San Francisco Bay. While monitoring the container ship, and a large number of regularly scheduled marine events inside the Bay, the same VTS operator noticed on closed-cir- cuit television a large plume of smoke at a port facility on a narrow channel. A fire had ignited at the terminal lCdr alexandra miller, P.e. Chief, Waterways Management Division Sector San Francisco U.S. Coast Guard encompassing a cargo storage tower, silo, conveyor belt, and a portion of the pier. At the time the fire broke out, a 576-foot tank vessel, a 623-foot bulk carrier, and a 637-foot roll-on/roll-off ship were moored at the pier. Located under the pier, but between the tank vessel and bulk carrier, the fire posed a grave threat to the lives of the facility workers, the crew members on the nearby ships, and those of the neighboring community. The VTS supervisor immediately contacted the San Francisco Bar Pilots to dispatch pilots to all three vessels and contacted each vessel to ensure crew safety and ask each master to expedite preparations to get underway. The pilots were able to get all three ships underway in less than 90 min- utes from the initial notification; an evolution that would normally take several hours. The Beginning In January 1970, the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center and the San Francisco Marine Exchange teamed up on an experiment to determine the usefulness of shore-based radar in maritime traffic safety. From a small room atop San Francisco’s Pier 45, Coast Guard personnel monitored vessel movements using state of the art radar displays and communicated vessel traffic information over UHF radio. The experi- ment, a first of its kind in the United States, was called the Harbor Advisory Radar (HAR) Project. On January 18, 1971, the tankers Arizona Standard and Oregon Standard collided underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The Oregon Standard spilled an estimated 20,000 barrels of oil into the San Francisco Bay. The November 1971 edition of Proceedings described the incident as “a catastrophe in terms of ecological harm, property dam- age, economic loss, and harm to the small boater and to the public’s stake in the environment.”1 How did such a catastrophe happen under the eyes of the Coast Guard HAR watch team? And doesn’t such a catastrophe happening during a research and develop- ment project prove the experiment a failure? Summer 2023 Proceedings 15