There was rain, thick fog and an ocean swell — in other words, just another day on the water for Donald Maloney, 60, as the Sea Bear, the tugboat he was captaining, traveled along the South Shore of Long Island on Saturday.

The Sea Bear, which had three other crew members, had finished a dredging job in a bay just west of the Hamptons, and the blue and white tug was headed toward New York Harbor to pick up a barge.

The tug was about a mile from the Pines section of Fire Island, a few miles south of where Mr. Maloney grew up in a tugboat family in Farmingville, N.Y. He was scampering onto tugboats while still in diapers and accompanying his father, Donald Sr., also a captain, on the family’s tug.

“Donnie came from a long tradition of tugs in our family,” recalled Kevin Maloney, 58, one of Mr. Maloney’s four brothers, and also a tug captain himself. “You’d be hard pressed to find a better captain out there, especially in a difficult situation.”