Ask Christopher Wojcik to describe his trade and he’ll tell you, above all, he’s an educator — one who loves creating art and loves the ocean. In fact, Chris is a multi-talented marine biologist whose specialties also include film making, photography, television hosting, guiding adventure travel expeditions, scientific illustration, exhibit and set design and SCUBA instruction.
The sea has been in Chris’s veins from an early age: Aboard his family’s charter fishing boat in the British Virgin Islands; starting at age 10, Chris spent every spare moment fishing and SCUBA diving there each year. That, combined with Chris’s vivid memories of seeing “Jaws” at age 7 nurtured his life-long fascination with the water… and with sharks in particular.
With a B.S. in biology from Monmouth University, Chris began his career as a biologist for National Marine Fisheries Service in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. He has spent many hundreds of days at sea in some of the earth’s most cruel conditions.
Following graduate studies and earning an M.S. in Biological Oceanography from Western Washington University, Chris’s post-graduate work took him to embarked on learning an additional specialty: exhibit design and construction. He has traveled the world documenting nature and building scenery, animal habitat, and interpretive graphics media for some of the most prestigious natural history museums and zoological institutions. Chris produced, directed, and was the primary camera operator for the Discovery Channel series, “Earth Grooves”, in collaboration with composer, Eric Hemion.
To date he has visited six of the seven continents and the waters around them to meet and film the creatures of the deep. Favorite destinations are the Galapagos Islands, where he dove amongst hundreds of hammerhead sharks, the coral reefs of Palau, the crystal clear water of the Red Sea in Egypt, and swimming among sperm whales in The Azores.
Teaching people about the ocean and its inhabitants is a true passion. Chris is relentlessly promoting stewardship of the sea through education. His work extends from print media, digital video, broadcast television, and lives on in the halls of countess public educational institutions around the world. Chris is an adjunct professor of biology and marine science at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. He was the host of the “Shark Cam” for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week! and recently hosted events for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Winter Festival, “Water”.
A native of Bay Head, NJ, Chris’s other passions include spearfishing, breath-hold diving, hunting, surfing, alternative energy, design, emerging technologies and international travel. He lives in Point Pleasant, NJ, with his wife Caryn and German Shepherd, Ellie.