- Charles Devans Waters
- cdwaters@email.unc.edu
I have lived in Morehead City, North Carolina, a used to be small but
now developed city on the Crystal Coast, since I was born on December
1, 1985. The ocean allows me to spend much free time enjoying body-boarding,
running on the beach ( I run for the UNC Club Cross Country and Track
teams), kayaking, fishing, and now, in the past few months, scuba diving.
These activities, along with the fact that my mother is a high school
marine biology teacher and my father is an employee of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, which operates Aquarius), have naturally
persuaded me to pursue a career in a marine-related field. I graduated
from West Carteret High School in 2004 having completed many science classes,
however it was the 2002 North Carolina Summer Ventures Program in Science
and Mathematics at Western Carolina University that gave me my first experience
with environmental research in the area of hydrology and mathematics.
This is my second summer working for the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill Department of Marine Sciences. Last summer, I worked under
Dr. Charles Peterson in studying the effects of a possible introduction
of a foreign oyster species into local waters. I met my current employer
and unofficial advisor in my first year at Chapel Hill. Dr. Chris Martens
taught my first-year seminar "Change in the Undersea World,"
where he introduced the class to an array of research topics. Although
I really cannot remember exactly how I came to work for him, I know that
I expressed my interest to him one day after class, became SCUBA certified
in the spring, and here I am.
As a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill, I have not completely decided on a major, though it will definitely be environmentally related. I am currently a biology major (which is also an automatic chemistry minor) and a marine science minor, with graduate school in mind. Somewhere in between, my older brother Richard (just graduated from Chapel Hill with honors with a double major in Mathematics and Chemistry), younger brother Jimmy (a senior at West Carteret), and myself have to complete our adventures of biking from Chapel Hill to Alaska, hiking the entire Appalachian Trail, and racing the 2013 Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii (and yes we are very serious about all of these!).
This is my third trip to Key Largo this summer, with this being my first as an official surface supporter, and I'm loving every minute of it!
