Yeah. I co owned a small chemical processing plant and over the years the regs kept getting tighter. It’s a must, but damned expensive. Security got more and more expensive for us.
Ports must be a nightmare to maintain compliance and security. Then there’s always scuba though too. I’d think that’s not easy to manage in cold currents.
I’m so glad I’m out of that business although I loved the challenge.
Absolutely, and I would be more than a little disappointed if they did not run down that line of investigation. That said, I think the chances, while not to the level of a "black swan event", are extremely small.
Everyone working in and around the port has to have a TWIC card, which requires a TSA background check. So, there is some level of screening for all employees in and around sea ports. Heck, when I did my brief stint working in the refinery business, I would have been required to get a TWIC card to go on the refinery property. It had a dock for unloading crude off of tankers, and was technically a "sea port"
I hate to say this, as it kinda feeds into the tin foil hat theory... Major ports and waterways have travel lanes set up just like a road for us land dwellers. The tides and currents are pretty well known and predictable, and that is in fact one of the reasons they require harbor pilots on the ship. Those pilots know all of the nuances of the local waters, and they get paid insane amounts of money...they start at $73k and can easily go upwards of $200k, and in some cases up to $400k. I'm guessing the Columbia bar pilots that handle the mouth of the Columbia River fall in the "north of $200k" pay range.
When I ran jet boats on the Willamette river, you had to take a certain line through parts of the river because of the currents, or steer in some correction to get the desired track through a cross current or up-welling. it's no different with the big boats. On the Washington State Ferries you can sometimes feel when you are going through a big eddy or up-welling.
Even docking a boat, a lot of times you are using power up to a certain point then cut power and drift into the dock, and if you know what you are doing, you can do it so you run out of energy right as the side of your boat is kissing the dock.
Bearing all of that in mind: Hypothetically....I think an experienced mariner could determine a point along the journey based on a time/current *could* in theory make something like this happen.
I've let my marine map/current tracking apps expire and I am no ready to start them up again, but here are some screenshots off the app store of information you can get on your smart phone. The thick magenta line at the top of the first image is a traffic lane. The other image is showing the currents and strength of the currents