This month, we read about Dad / Racer / Race Innovator / Oil Spill Response Guru Peter Marcus…
Q: Let’s start off with your most recent project: the Padden Paddling Relay for the Foodbank, where you not only stoked out a couple dozen racers on a beautiful autumn morning, but you raised $600 and 300 pounds of food for the needy. Hit us with some highlights from the moment you had the idea to handing off that check to the Foodbank. A: A relay has always been on my mind, it takes the tension of ”me vs. you” out of racing and puts the team concept up front where the intermediate paddler is just as important as your Olympic all-star. When I threw out the post about the concept on the Whatcom Paddler’s forum the immediate response from the paddling community was quick and loud… and I thought, “Uh-oh…I have to do this thing.” Right away I was checking the possible weather two weeks out, sponsors, ideas – which I received from lots of sources. It was “Grand.” The Weather Gods were in on the gig so it was a good day. After the event, as I paddled around the lake retrieving the race buoys in the afternoon, I know it sounds corny, but I just had this really good vibe going on. And I can’t wait for next year, it will be huge!!! Three hundred pounds of canned and packaged goods gone from of the back of my car helped the gas mileage improve, and when I handed the cash over… I was a little disappointed it was over, but the Foodbank was happy!
Q: Peter, I’ve heard you speak about the open water (and have watched you treat it) with as much respect as anyone I’ve met. What have you experienced or seen that resulted in that deep respect?
A: My Dad. I was on his sailboat at 3 weeks old and have never left the water. I grew up sailboat racing with him and then started commercial fishing when I was 11 and ran my first gillnetter when I was 12. I guess it was a lot like growing up on a farm, but I did it on the water. I paid my dues face to face with the boat’s toilet as I lost my last meal for the twentieth time in a row due to being seasick, fishing out in the Aleutian Islands, losing windows due to heavy seas, dealing with fellow boats sinking or watching crew members get flung over the side in rough and heated confrontations in Bristol Bay, AK. I love to read the water. It’s an ever-changing page-by-page story, and when you’re on it in a surfski or a commercial boat you feel it through your senses, touch, smell, sight, hearing, etc., and it gets imprinted in you! Now if I can only “sense it” in keeping me from falling out… and to beat Simon “downwind.”
Q: You’re in a very interesting and ecologically critical line of work. Tell us a bit about it. And what is the biggest change, in your opinion, that your industry needs to undergo? A: For the last eleven years I have worked in the emergency oil-spill response business. Basically, I get paid for playing in a boat. We are a co-op that companies join in order to have a 24/7 emergency response. In 1990, Op’s 90 (after the Exxon Valdez accident) required Federally that any company transporting product on or near the water must have a spill response. Thus… ‘we’ came along. It is more fiscally efficient to have one company support this then to have each gigantic company like Shell Oil, etc., provide their own equipment and response. If I could change it? We sometimes get to be a little too political in order to decrease a monetary penalty against the spiller, usually given by the Department of Ecology. We show immediate force at a spill but maybe not necessarily the best productivity when it comes to actually cleaning it the best way. We have a lot of chefs, i.e. the Coast Guard, the Department of Ecology, the local government, volunteers… I think, without stepping on too many toes, we have too many chefs and not enough diners!
Q: What are a couple things that you would mandate for the future waterfront development in Bellingham? A: For sure low income housing, like on the Southside, off Harris Ave. by the Fire Station. I think that was done well! Second, Open Apace, any kind “not paved!” Third, a low, large dock for small boat launches, of course!!
Q: Your twin daughters, Alex and Riley, are about the head off to college. (Congratulations, man!) What’s your message to them as they charge out into the world? A: Can you help me out after paying for your college??? Seriously though, “If you have a desire or passion for something, and you can’t wait to get up the next morning to do it again… then you’ve made the right life choice and stick with it!!!!!!”
