THE
AMERICAN SOCIETY
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Captain Marsh's contributions in the areas of salvage and naval engineering have been truly remarkable. His leadership and technical expertise have advanced the state-of-the-art in submarine personnel rescue systems, deep ocean recovery procedures, damaged combatant vessel heavy lifts, and large open-ocean search and recovery procedures. Further, his personal involvement has brought innovation and success to many high profile U.S. Navy salvage operations in recent years.
Captain Marsh engineered and directed the deepest commercial or military salvage effort of its kind in successfully recovering the 850-ton Japanese fishing vessel, Ehime Maru, from 2000 feet of seawater. His superior leadership, managerial skill and innovative technical acumen were key to the success of the recovery. This historical and precedent setting feat has markedly expanded the range of depths accessible for salvage engineering. Captain Marsh has also excelled in other emergency situations such as devising procedures and organizing the heavy lift of USS COLE and developing procedures that greatly improved the accuracy and effectiveness of open-ocean search in the recovery of the "Egypt Air" crash. He has also provided pioneering leadership for innovation in salvage and rescue tools and procedures such as the Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression system that will dramatically broaden the coverage and shorten the response time for emergency submarine rescue.
Captain Marsh is truly a consummate naval engineer. He has excelled in applying
the principles and technologies from a broad range of disciplines to the resolution
of challenging problems at sea. His visionary and multi-disciplined approaches
have brought numerous advances to the field of salvage engineering. Further,
he has literally written the book on many of these procedures by ensuring they
are documented and made available for use by others in the field. His technical
excellence and superb engineering leadership epitomize the highest ideals of
naval engineering and he is indeed most worthy of the ASNE Gold Medal.