Christopher Clark
Olympic Peninsula, Washington
I am currently a senior attending Huxley College of the Environment and will be graduating Spring of 2013. My wife and I moved out to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state around Spring 2010. The amount of rewarding work and recreational opportunities found on the Peninsula is second to none. From the ocean to the headwaters and everything in between the Olympic Peninsula has it all.
The Elwha Dam removal project has garnered most of my professional and scholastic attention. This project provides researchers with an opportunity to monitor an entire watershed as it transcends through several phases of restoration. My focus has been in the marine environment. I have worked closely with Sea Grant and USGS scientists monitoring sub-tidal communities, intertidal communities, and physical nearshore processes. My interest lies in marine ecology specifically the interactions between organisms and their environment, and the responses of organisms to different perturbations.
I wear several hats on the work front. Right now I am a GIS Specialist for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC). I have been working for the NWIFC for over two years. In addition I work for the USGS on the Elwha project. Recently I have become a American Academy of Underwater Scientists (AAUS) certified scientific diver. This has allowed me to monitor sub-tidal communities with USGS. More recently I have taken a position with the University of Washington at their Olympic Natural Resource Center (ONRC) as a research technician. In this role I will be mostly working on Marine Spatial Planning projects and Shoreline Master Plans.
When I am not working, or attending to scholastic matters I enjoy the outdoors as much as possible. My wife and I are avid fisherman. We live 3 minutes from 3 rivers, 15 minutes from 5. Hiking into remote stretches of coastline (aka hidden surf breaks) is a new found joy of ours as well. When I am not found hiking beaches or fishing, I am usually cruising timber scouting for my next archery season.