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Chip Maran
Republican Southampton Town Trustee candidate Chip Maran’s family has lived in town for generations — “we’re not as old as the Halseys, but pretty close” — and said he’s running for the office to support the basic mission of the Trustees, public access and the health of the water.
He grew up in Mecox and went to college far afield, in Tasmania, where he studied aquaculture and learned about that country’s strategies for dealing with a parasitical disease plaguing the oysters there.
He worked as a full-time bayman for about 20 years, he said, before he “saw the handwriting on the wall” and bought a commercial dragger that runs out of the commercial docks in Shinnecock. He alternates with another captain on the dragger, he said, so he’ll have time enough to put in the work as a Trustee if elected.
This is Maran’s first foray into electoral politics and he said he has been “groomed for the job for quite a while,” have fished with and worked with old-time fishing and farming families including the late and legendary former East Hampton Trustee Stuart Vorpahl.
Maran’s background in aquaculture suits him well for the posting, he said, noting that there’s a lot of overthinking that goes on when it comes to creating desirable environments for oysters to flourish. “Put some concrete on Christmas trees and you’ll have lots of oysters,” he said, describing himself as a very practical person with a shoe-string based mentality when it comes to affordable and creative ways to protect and enhance the bays.
Maran said he’s running in part to support a younger generation of locals who are now coming up and ought to have the same opportunities as he did to make a living on the water. “Everyone as a taxpayer should have the right to do that.”
As for the oft-reported strain between the Town Council and the Trustees, Maran notes that he is a certified peer mediator. And he said that “growing up in Water Mill in a tight-knit community, you got stuff done but didn’t let ego get in the way of anything.”
