Shawn Hughes has spent many hours staring at the side of boats most of us never see — their bottoms. As owner of Scrub a Dub Dive Service, it’s his job to see the grit, barnacles, algal slime, and occasional octopus that settle on a boat’s hull and then scrub them away.
A clean hull is as necessary a part of owning a boat as an oil change for owning a car. A mucky hull causes a boat to drag in the water and use more fuel, and it makes it harder to maneuver. Most boats sport a coat of anti-fouling paint on their hulls to discourage life from flourishing, but this only slows down, rather than stops, growth. Anti-fouling paints have another drawback. They usually employ copper as an active ingredient, and copper in high concentrations is toxic to marine life.
Anti-fouling paint’s imperfections allow Hughes to make his living. Even with a painted hull, boats sitting in the Santa Barbara Harbor need to be wiped clean about once a month. The work isn’t complicated and doesn’t involve any fancy equipment. But it does require diligence and great attention to detail. Hughes continues to do all his cleaning the old-fashioned way — by hand with a cleaning pad or brush — because it minimizes paint removal and the release of copper into the environment.