Scott Deal had a very busy job, and he liked it that way.

When I first started, we would have close to 100,000 boats a year.

Massive amounts of recreational traffic.

Was that fun?

It was a lot of fun.

Everybody would just go out on their boats and go get drunk and everything.

Scott worked at Seattle's Ballard Locks.

The locks is essentially an aquatic elevator.

Boats go in and get raised and lowered.

That allows them to travel between the saltwater of Puget Sound and a couple of fresh water lakes.

It was Scott's job to make sure those vessels got through smoothly.

That didn't always happen.

People would get mad at each other because they thought somebody cut in ahead of you.

And then they would have exchange of words or even sometimes throwing bottles at each other.

And that was fun for you when people would throw bottles at each other.

Well, it was just hilarious to see human behavior.

I mean, if you wanted to study how people are, that was a place.

The locks were also a great place to observe other species.

I was a little kid in the early mid late 80s.

And one of our favorite things to do on weekends was to go to the Ballard Locks and watch this hurricane of fish.

That's journalist Kate Gammon.

As a kid, she saw all kinds of fish pass through the locks on their way to spawn.

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