The crew sleeps until the boats come home

Ryan runs his family’s small seafood processing plant by the Boston Fish Pier. When the boats come in, his crew must be on the line within the hour, or the catch loses its price. But boats keep no timetable. So he pays six people to wait from dawn, some days for nothing. Other days a boat arrives and half the crew is home. With xMap Flows, Ryan built Cedar. Every fifteen minutes, over Boston Harbor, Cedar listens for the boats out on the water, keeps the fishing boats, notices when one enters the harbour, and tells the crew to come in. Now the crew sleeps until Cedar writes. A trawler crosses into the harbour at four, and the message reaches six phones at once. By five the line is running, and the haddock is on ice within the hour. Ryan stopped paying people to wait for the sea. Now the sea calls them in.

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