I’m Chris Eardley, a Natural Resources Policy Fellow for Oregon SeaGrant. I’ve been paired up with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Marine Reserves program, and I’m excited to be gaining agency experience in management of marine resources. I’ll be putting the inter-disciplinary training I received from OSU’s Marine Resource Management to work on both the biological and social sides of management. On the social side, I’ll be developing a socio-cultural profile of a local fishing community that will seek to inform future ocean management discussions (not just marine reserves).

With the biological side, I’ll be contributing to the development of pre-reserves baselines by analyzing footage gathered using a variety of underwater video survey techniques. This includes supporting field deployment of video equipment such as ROVS and video sleds, reviewing video footage, and helping to develop protocols. I’ll focus largely on invertebrates and I’ll also be supporting GIS work. Hopefully, I’ll even get one of those cool ODFW winter hats.

In a nutshell, I’m going to be busy and I’m learning a ton–including what sideways rain looks like and how many types of precipitation are possible in the span of an hour on the Oregon coast.

Should make for an interesting winter!

Cheers,

Chris