It could not be said that Peggy Stap has lived a life which led in a clear straight line towards cetacean conservation. But that is perfectly on keeping with the sort of woman she is. Her life tends to go in 100 directions all at once on a daily basis, as does her conversation. Peggy is a wonderful, enthusing public speaker with a tendency to go off track down winding tangents full of great stories, with the minor side effect of leaving the listener’s head spinning slightly. I have heard snippets of Peggy’s history in restaurants, in the car and the kitchen, at any time of day and night, and in many different orders. So to get a clear picture of the first 40 years of her life I had to sit her down at breakfast this morning and go through things one simple step at a time. (Even then I had to give her the odd nudge to stay on track.)
What emerges is an unusual and inspiring story. Many people can spend their whole lives in jobs and relationships they dislike, often out of fear or lack of self-confidence. Peggy is lucky; her character is such that she has always been prepared to experiment and go in different directions to seek a fulfilling path in life, whatever weird and wonderful places that may take her to. Peggy’s unusual journey is one little slice of a big proof-pudding that we are all capable of so much more than we sometimes let ourselves believe.
Peggy grew up in Michigan. At school her forte was science and maths, “definitely not English” she says. (This point can be proved beyond any reasonable doubt with the example of when she tried to describe the word ‘impaled’ to her husband Dick. Not being able to remember that word, she chose to use another word to describe it. Unfortunately she chose the word ‘macabre’, more unfortunately she did not know how to pronounce it. So she acted out stabbing herself, while calling out “macabee, macabee!” in the vague hope Dick would understand. Luckily he knew his wife so well he actually interpreted what she meant but spent the next hour in stitches of laughter because of it.)
Her love for dolphins began in childhood, but only in the vague way that many children fall in love with dolphins. She watched Flipper and saw a dolphin in a tank in Florida. At that age any notion of the cruelty at keeping such an animal captive was understandably not present. What Peggy remembers was the inspiring nature of the encounter. She remembers a more dramatic meeting, also in Florida, with a wild dolphin who swam into the dock where she was sitting, stuck its head out of the water and said “eeeeee, eeeee, eeeeeee” at her. Maybe this is where she first picked up the language. These childhood moments gave her a wish to get closer to dolphins at some point in her life, maybe to swim with them someday…, but they did not make her want to work with them. They planted a seed, but it was many years before the seed germinated and grew.
At 16 years old, while still in high school and at the suggestion of her chemistry teacher, Peggy studied chemistry and micro-biology for the summer at the University of Kansas. She also worked in the kitchen there as money was tight; she has always been a hard worker and maybe it sprang from this age. She graduated aged 17 and went to Western Michigan University to study medical technology. While studying for three years Peggy also worked in the hospital as a bacteriologist assistant. She had to prepare and clear Petri dishes, deal with smears and tests, and take blood from patients. She remembers that they all practised the art of taking blood on each other in the lab before having a go on the actual patient; not your usual on-the-job training.
Peggy decided not to go on and become a medical technologist. Having spent a great deal of time while working at the hospital in a small lab room with no windows, she realised the reality of what this life would entail and decided it was not for her. But in order to tell you how she side leaped from medical technology to gardening I’ll have to bring Peggy’s husband Dick into the picture.
Dick and Peggy had an all around the houses kind of beginning to what became a life long happy marriage. They originally knew each other when Peggy was at high school. Dick was in the basketball league and Peggy with her friend Lisa, also Dick’s ex-girlfriend, would record the score for them. At that time Peggy was with her first boyfriend but she and Dick became friends. Peggy and her boyfriend split after two years and Peggy remembers going to a dance hoping that Dick would ask her to dance with him. He never did, but shortly after he did ask her out on a date. Peggy was newly single, young and had never dated before, so she dated Dick but she also dated two other guys on the same day. She was pretty tired after a day of tennis, picnic by a lake and bowling with three different young men. For the next three years while Peggy was at college, she and Dick fell in and out of dating, being friends and dating other people. Peggy’s feelings at the time were that she liked Dick but “you know, I’m not sure” and she was enjoying the fun of being asked out by different guys.
At last at age 20, Peggy and Dick got together properly. There was a sticky moment when Peggy’s dad was moving away and she was possibly going to move with him, but by now she and Dick realised they were inseparable so she stayed and moved in with Dick instead.
Three years later in 1978 they got married, although not without a last minute need of reflection for Peggy. A year before the big day Peggy remembers getting cold feet and a little scared. In response to her fears Dick wrote on the wall while they were painting their house “Do you love me?” She wrote back “Yes”, but in reality her fear made her uncertain. She was still very young and had not had much time being single to find her independence and sense of self. Wisely, she went to stay with her grandparents as she knew they would give her the space to be with her own feelings and not try to influence her. This moment of space was all she needed to discover for herself that she did indeed love Dick and wanted to marry him.
So now we can return to Peggy’s decision to leave the medical world. Dick owned a landscaping business and Peggy started working for him. Over time she learnt how to design and plant flowerbeds, (can you tell by now she is a voracious learner?) She set up her own business designing, planting and running a nursery. But she needed a second job to keep her going through the winter. Her brother in law ran an upholstery business so she worked for him. Once again Peggy then set up her own business designing and sewing frames for pictures, pillows, accessories and hair clips. From there her selling skills took off and she worked additionally for two other companies selling clothing and was promoted to National Sales Manager.
But then she got sick with Epstein-Barr and could not maintain this lifestyle. On Dick’s suggestion she returned to plants. Her summer gardening business was still going but now for the winter she grew perennials. Initially she undertook this in their barn, from there she built a 3,000 sq foot greenhouse, and from there, not being content with just the one, she built another two.
Peggy says that she was a happy woman throughout this period of her life. She and Dick had a great marriage and she loved her job. She was perfectly content and not looking for anything new in her life or feeling that anything was missing. She did however still want to swim with a dolphin, so she decided in her late thirties to learn scuba diving because she figured this might give her the chance to get in the water with a wild dolphin.
In the autumn of 1995 Peggy’s dad died. She had always been very close to her father and was distraught, she cried for months after, she says. In January 1996 Peggy and her mum went to Maui. Her mum had been going every year and Peggy had always had a thing for Hawaii, so this year she went just to ‘get away’…
This one trip to Maui at the age of forty, after a life of medical science, landscape gardening, designing and sewing, being a saleswoman and building huge greenhouses, changed the entire course of Peggy’s life from then until this very day.
But more on that momentous encounter and the next 16 years of Peggy’s life next time…
A friend of hers has likened her to a tornado; people tend to get caught up in what she does. This tornado effect is generally a positive one, unless you happen to stand too close to her when she is talking and then you may get a light slap across the face by one of her wildly gesturing hands.
Her dad was a huge influence on her. She remembers him telling her three things: be honest; do not waste time in getting depressed; toot your own horn occasionally because no one else will toot it for you. His death, plus the early death of her brother, spurred Peggy on to live life as fully and whole-heartedly as possible. She feels she is living her life for them as well as for herself.
Peggy says of her work as a researcher and conservationist that she is learning every day. She says that what she knows is contained within the tip of her little finger only and the more she learns, the more she knows there is to learn. She does not consider herself to be someone with all the answers, her wish is simply to be a researcher who can contribute one little bite to one very big pie.
The cake which Peggy gave me for my birthday still tasted good a whole week later!
Now I have to tell you about the encounter we had this Wednesday but firstly I must give a mention to Monday. Monday was my birthday and we were welcomed on board 
We were hoping for Killer Whales, or Orca’s as they are often known, as these are the main focus of Peggy’s research, and Peggy had made a wish that morning to come across a group close to the boat. The transient Orca’s (transient meaning they are not resident here but roam over large areas of ocean), can enter the bay throughout the year but spring is a particularly good time to find them. At this time they are in the bay to hunt female Gray Whales and their calves. The Gray Whales are migrating through the area from Baja California in Mexico, where the mothers have given birth to their young, to their feeding grounds in the North.
We are about 40 minutes out of port when Kate spots what she thinks are going to be Humpback Whales up ahead. Ten minutes later as we draw close it becomes apparent that these are not Humpbacks but Killer Whales. Suddenly there are Orca’s seemingly on all sides. They are spotted in front, then to one side, then further off to the other side. How many? Hard to tell at this point. They are moving purposefully in different directions, porpoising through the water, (leaping the waves to create less friction and travel faster). They are on the hunt, although hunting what exactly we cannot tell. Are they chasing multiple prey? Have they already corralled one victim away from a group or its mother to play with it before the kill? We keep watching, not fully aware as yet of the significance of the unfolding drama.
We have counted at least seven Orca’s by now with males, females and calves, but there are probably more as they have split off in different, disorientating directions. Up in front the action becomes more lively, with one or more Orca’s going into attack mode, leaping out of the water and crashing back down, possibly lunging on their prey, although the prey is still not visible to us. The breaches out of the water where the Orca’s entire body flies through mid-air for a flash of a moment are spectacular and draw stunned gasps from everyone on the boat. Then there is a split second moment where one adult Orca leaps and while in mid-air I glimpse something just ahead of its mouth; it has to be the prey. In that moment, Peggy and Kate are snapping away on their cameras with no idea of what image they may capture. Is this the actual moment of the kill, or was the victim already dead? Is it a Harbor Seal or Sea Lion fated to be their feast this day? We do not know, but I am aware of opposing feelings of thrill at having witnessed such a spectacle, gladness that the Orca’s have food to eat and empathy for the doomed victim.
After this climactic moment their behaviour changes. The pace slows, there is some general milling about with Orca’s popping up on different sides of the boat. Are they relaxing after their frenetic activity? Who is eating the kill? We do not see the prey being eaten so will never know if the calves are the ones to feast on this day. We do however have the privilege of seeing an adult Orca spyhop twice right in front of the boat (sticking its head directly up out of the water to take a peek at whatever is around; in this case us). In this moment their character appears different to us; from sleek, fast, determined, professional hunter to playful, inquisitive, multi-focussed and aware creature. (Although our human interpretations may be meaningless to these beautiful animals whose intelligence and consciousness are so different from ours.)
Their behaviour shifts again as they set off travelling in one clear direction, moving sometimes at the surface and then diving for a few minutes before resurfacing again further ahead. We hear that another boat about three miles ahead of us has also been with a group of Killer Whales. Have the two groups been communicating? Is our group now travelling to meet the other group further out in the bay? We follow the pod as they maintain their direct line of travel, by now we know there at least 11 individuals, but maybe more, with at least two males in the group, (mature males have much taller striking dorsal fins than females and immature males). Somewhere along the way, the group splits with some heading off southwards and the others west; whether any of them meet the group further out in the bay remains unknown to us as it is now time for our boat to start heading back to port.
That night, Peggy sat in front of the computer going through over 500 photos from the trip. It was only now that we discovered in amazement that she had a picture of the actual kill. Now we could see that the prey was not a Seal or Sea Lion at all but was in fact a Harbor Porpoise.
She rarely stops! Peggy typically works a seven day week from whatever time she wakes up in the morning, (I think I usually hear her up and about by six am, sometimes she goes to the gym even earlier), till when she goes to bed. From 2006 when she set up Marine Life Studies until today she has undertaken this work on an entirely voluntary basis. Any funding that Peggy receives pays for various costs and projects, such as buying equipment for the Whale Entanglement Team (W.E.T), none of it pays for Peggy’s time. And none of it pays for the huge firecracker amounts of energy which she invests in her work
found her love for whales and dolphins at the age of forty. An encounter with a Humpback whale in Maui literally changed her life. Sixteen years later and she is a highly knowledgable and respected cetacean conservationist. She is testimony to the fact that is never too late to find your passion and follow it.
It had seemed a day almost like any other. Almost, but not quite. It began as her days usually began, with sunlight and stretching and dancing her way through the woods. But today the feral girl decided to wander further, to go to the edge of her known world and venture beyond. What led her to do so she did not really know and did not question. A feeling guided her and she simply followed.
And so it continued. For five weeks of human time the feral girl lived a life of quiet, calm, hidden, vigilant watching. Some days it rained, some days the sun shone, some days brought huge thunderstorms which sent the villagers running for shelter and left the feral girl crouched into hollowed tree trunks. She drank from a nearby stream when necessary and ate of the plants in the area which she knew tasted good. She moved around and watched from different places. She got to know the whole of the village and the area around it. She found all the tracks left by the villagers as they left and entered. She began to be able to tell each inhabitant apart and to know their daily activities. And each night she slept somewhere safe where she knew none would find her.
The more she watched, the more perplexed and uncertain she became. The humans lived a life so different to hers she couldn’t grasp it. Their lives were intertwined with one another and enmeshed in such habits and structures that she did not understand. Each person seemed to have a role to play, but how this role was decided or how each person knew their role was unclear. In some ways the people of the village did similar things to her; they awoke, they ate and drank, they hunted and found food, they slept at night in their strangely shaped dwellings which resembled caves. But it was much more ordered than her existence, much more planned, as if the people were following an invisible guidebook on how to live their daily lives.
I came across 
His email contained a long, detailed account of his own life within the conservation field and the challenges, to put it mildly, that he has faced and faces on a daily basis. Now his email did not exactly put me off, I am far too stubborn for that, but it did arrive in my inbox at an interesting moment…
But who? It had to be on the American continent, my budget would not stretch around the world. I love Canada, so for the love of Canada I decided it had to be there. But I did not have such a close relationship with any individuals in Canada… Except, I did remember one comment from a woman called 
So, instead, this post is an au revoir to the wonderful Planet Whale team. And a thank you for the amazing opportunity they gave me to work for them. I have loved every minute of it (well mostly, there were some sticky moments). It is, I hope, not a full good bye, but a pause in the proceedings.
And thank you to multi-media designer, film maker, conservationist, all round ideas woman 
If you’ve read my previous post you know the story so far.
