When the electrical system on Dominic Zanke’s 42-foot fishing boat, Tyrant, suddenly failed one day this spring, the veteran lobsterman was 35 miles out to sea, with no radio or radar to guide him home.
Mr. Zanke, who fishes out of Stonington, Maine, saw little cause for worry. He knew he could rely on an old-school fallback: the sprawling network of Coast Guard navigational buoys that dot the coastline from Maine to New Jersey. Generations of fishermen, ferry captains and recreational boaters have taken comfort in knowing that if all else fails, the buoys will be there.
In recent months, though, that faith has been shaken by a Coast Guard proposal to do away with roughly 350 buoys, a winnowing the agency says makes sense given decades of advancement in electronic tools for navigation.
To some who have used the buoys to skirt disaster on foggy shoals and in narrow channels rocked by squalls, the plan to remove them feels like a betrayal.
“What is the value of a life at sea?” said Jon Wilson, an elder statesman of Maine’s sailing community and the founder of WoodenBoat magazine. “There were marine accidents that made people say, ‘We need a buoy here.’ There’s a genius to the system, and it has worked for a reason.”
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