Titan Salvage workers have extensive safety training, but guests to the jack-up barges anchored in the North Spit surf also are outfitted with safety devices.

Visitors must wear life jackets and hard hats and are briefed on what to watch out for while on the work site.

The puffy bright orange life vests and bumblebee-yellow hard hats with “VISITOR” written in black letters may leave guests feeling a little conspicuous.  

“That is exactly why we have visitors wear those embarrassing yellow hats,” Salvage Superintendent Shelby Harris said.

Conspicuous is good when 3-ton chunks of steel are swinging around.

He said they aren’t trying to humiliate people, but they are trying to make visitors look out of place.

Visitors are told to look out for lumber, scrap and wire on the decks before taking the cable car ride out to the site. They’re also escorted by tour guides who keep them from going anywhere unsafe. But the clashing-colored safety equipment adds another level of safety assurance.

“It helps us identify a person who isn’t as in tune to what is going on,” Harris said.

— Staff Writer Jolene Guzman