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Call it 'Boater ID'

Floating fleet of watchers is no joke

May 1, 2008

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The role of recreational boaters in fighting terrorism is still evolving, but it deserves more serious consideration than Jay Leno's joke about millions of fishermen with rifles.

The source of the humor was the densely worded and very unfunny Small Vessel Security Strategy put out this week by the Department of Homeland Security. There's no question about vulnerability. The United States has 95,000 miles of coastline and 10,000 miles of navigable waterways, and neither the Coast Guard nor any other agency can cover that vast watery space. That's why the department held a summit last year on small boat security. The result is this new strategy.

One of its goals is to develop a partnership with nearly 80 million boaters, who will probably be more amenable now that the idea of licensing them is off the table. One of the objectives is to increase awareness of the existing America's Waterways Watch, which encourages boaters to call in if they see something suspicious. That's a floating version of the MTA's "if you see something, say something" campaign, which feeds a database that the state developed to spot trends. The strategy also aims to improve tracking of small vessels.

Let's be realistic: The vulnerability is so great that no system can assure perfect safety. But if this approach taps both the omnipresence and the common sense of recreational boaters to increase their role in national vigilance, that's nothing to snicker at.