Mako’s Water Taxi is owned and operated by Mako Haggerty, a reformed commercial fisherman. In 1996, after spending 14 years fishing the unforgiving waters of Alaska (and too many Tylenol!), he started Mako’s Water Taxi because he wanted to serve the local community and share the wonders of Kachemak Bay. Mako has no free time, yet he has served on the boards of Cook Inletkeeper and KBBI Public Radio, been elected twice to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, and currently serves on the boards of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council and the Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park. He knows the bottom of Kachemak Bay better than anyone!

Gart has spent much of his life on the water, sailing dinghies at age 6 in Southern California.  Not long after graduating from Walla Walla College with a degree in English, he headed to Dutch Harbor to work on a catcher/processor. After fulfilling several contracts in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, he immediately spent his crew share on a 34-foot sloop and made for Baja, eventually getting across the Pacific as far as New Zealand before running out of money. Gart worked a number of years for National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions, running eco-tours in Southeast Alaska in summer, and in the Gulf of California/Baja in winter.  He has crewed for several yacht deliveries on the East Coast and spent a summer running shuttles and tours on the Susitna and Talkeetna Rivers. Since then, Gart has been happily operating the Blue Too on one of the most beautiful bays in the western hemisphere and going home every night. He lives in Homer, Alaska, with his wife Deb and their two children, Leland and Margo. They ski, hike, fish, and even surf from time to time.

Born and raised in Homer, Alaska, Lance and his twin brother Max -  aka Port and Starboard - made a formidable duo in the Homer Little League.   Lance began his maritime career early:  fishing and boating with Mom and Dad, swimming for the Homer High School Mariners, seining in Prince William Sound, gill-netting in Bristol Bay, king crab fishing in the Bering Sea, and drifting aimlessly on a reed raft in Thailand.  Lance holds a 100-ton Master’s license, volunteers as a trailblazer in Kachemak Bay State Park, lives to ski, and works tirelessly on his homestead with his main squeeze, Pam the Halibut Researcher.  He is currently Master and Owner of the Mulligan.

Don’t ask him about his commercial fishing career unless you have time for some great stories.

Curt grew up along the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana, where he first took the wheel of a sailing boat on open water.  Graduating from Purdue University with a degree in Biology, he published research on the role of bird communication in forest ecosystems.  He spent three years teaching high school biology/environmental science in Compton, California, where his daily classroom mantra was “Live your dream!”  During the third year of teaching, a student asked Curt what his dream was, and he left the classroom to get busy pursuing it:  a career on boats.  He worked as a research diver and boat operator in grad school, tracking giant ocean sunfish, tagging mako sharks off the coast of Mexico, and observing swordfish and leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific with the National Marine Fisheries.  He arrived in Alaska in 2000, working as a halibut researcher on the remote Aleutian Island of Adak.  For the next decade, he worked aboard fishing vessels out of Homer.  In 2015, Curt and his wife, Jen, became the proud parents of a sailor-in-training, Oberon Jackson. That same year, Captain Curt also became the proud owner of a thirty-two-foot, nine-thousand-pound Munson landing craft, the Orca.

Kari grew up on the coast of Maine where she spent many days fishing flounder out of a rowboat and sailing with her dad.  Not long after making her way to Alaska, she got work as a commercial long line fisherman and spent the next decade fishing in the Aleutian Islands, the Pribilofs, Bristol Bay, Nome, Prince William Sound, and Southeast Alaska.  On one of her first adventures across Kachemak Bay she purchased land and built a cabin on a steep cliff with a view of the Herring Islands, Grace Ridge, Sadie Peak, and Eldred passage, one of the most beautiful places on earth.  For many years she and her husband and daughter have divided their time living across Kachemak Bay during the long days and spending the winter months at their cabin in the Chugach Mountains in the Girdwood Valley, back-country skiing and playing old time music.  She can be found running the Blue Too.

Bob hails from the mob-infested waters of Atlantic City, where he delivered newspapers, waited tables, sailed, rowed and ran boats, parked cars at casinos and life guarded on ocean beaches. He amassed lots of injuries playing football and baseball - and swimming, surfing and skateboarding - and probably peaked athletically at the age of 13. After seeing dead dolphins and medical waste washing-up on his beloved Jersey Shore, he decided to do something about it, and studied biology, chemistry and law on his way to a career as a radical environmental activist (because isn’t clean water a radical idea?!). In 1995, some local fishermen and Native folks won a pollution lawsuit against the oil industry in Cook Inlet, and they hired Bob to lead the nonprofit watchdog Cook Inletkeeper with the proceeds. Bob banged heads with big oil and corrupt bureaucrats for 26 years before coming to his senses; now he’s got the best job in the world running boats for Mako’s Water Taxi! He lives in Homer and gets regularly humbled by his writer wife and two daughters. And a dog. And a cat. He runs the Mulligan when Lance isn’t.