Warning boaters: There’s a mine field at the entrance to Quartermaster Harbor.  Not the exploding kind, rather the kind that imperils navigation, snags propellers, stops engines and can cost thousands of dollars in towing and repairs for boaters.

Scores of poorly marked and indiscriminately placed crab pot floats litter the entire entrance to the busy harbor. The combination of faded markings and random placement make an obstacle course during the best of conditions. Wave action, wind or impaired visibility can create a real peril for safe navigation throughout the first half-mile or so of the harbor entrance.

This would not be a difficult problem to solve without restricting legitimate crabbing in the harbor entrance. Brighter float markings or, better yet, the use of small orange flags or banners on the floats are the simplest solutions. Better judgment by commercial, tribal and public crabbers in keeping open a clear channel for safe navigation down the middle of the harbor entrance would be a more complicated but perhaps necessary alternative. After all, it’s considered common sense to keep public roads and highways free of personal property that endangers others. The same should be true of our aquatic “highways.”

— Charles “Buzz” Blick