On Jan. 3, the day before Oregon’s Dungeness crab fishing season was set to start, conditions looked bleak. “Crabbers to sail into storm,” read a headline in the Newport News Times, which noted the marine forecast predicted 20-foot swells and gusts of up to 55 mph. Among the commercial fishing boats leaving from Yaquina Bay in Newport, Ore., was the Mary B II, a wooden 42-foot fishing vessel.