How would you feel if you had to rely on radio reports and your own common sense to keep ships miles away from you safe on the water? Would you know what to do?

Meet U.S. Coast Guard LT Patrick St. John. As an Operations Officer with the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service in Puget Sound, that's what Pat does every day.

What is Vessel Traffic Service, though, and why is it needed? And what exactly does Pat do to regulate vessel traffic?

To get a sense of Pat St. John's job, find Puget Sound on an atlas or map. Puget Sound is located along the northwest coast of the United States. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by a narrow passageway called the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Several major ports - including Seattle and Tacoma, Washington - are located in Puget Sound, which means that large container ships and freighters must be able to navigate it. But if you look carefully at your map, you'll see what a daunting challenge that must be: Puget Sound is filled with dozens of large and small islands that ships must sail around; and it is located just south of the U.S./Canada border and the Strait of Georgia, meaning that ships traveling to and from Puget Sound may encounter Canadian as well as U.S. traffic.

Navigating Puget Sound is quite a challenge, and that's where Pat and the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service come in. When he's on duty, Pat supervises three Sector Operators at the Puget Sound Vessel Traffic Center. The sector operators listen to the conversations of ship captains on a VHF radio. Ships in Puget Sound frequently meet, cross, and overtake each other as they travel. When they do, their captains must clearly explain their intentions over the radio frequency, so that everyone understands what is going to happen. Pat and his staff listen in on these conversations to make sure that the ship captains all understand each other and are all traveling safely.

As you might imagine, Pat's job requires a great deal of experience at sea, experience he's gained through the Coast Guard. Pat joined the Coast Guard in 1992, after receiving a college degree in Business Administration. His first assignment was on land, in Washington DC, where he edited the Coast Guard's magazine.

A year later, Pat went to sea as a Deck Watch Officer aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) MACKINAW, a 29-foot icebreaker that worked on the Great Lakes between the United States and Canada. A few years later, Pat moved to other ports for experience as part of a Law Enforcement Detachment, working to stop drug traffic in the Caribbean and helping the United Nations board vessels in the North Arabian Gulf.

After these experiences, Pat moved to Port Angeles, Washington, and became an Operations Officer/Deck Watch Officer aboard the USCGC ACTIVE. That assignment helped him learn Puget Sound's geography and shipping lanes, and prepared him for his current job.

Pat enjoys his responsibility and takes it very seriously. But what does he do when he gets radio reports from two ships that appear to be heading for a collision? Download the case study and help him solve the problem… quickly!