Big Sur coastlineMisty headland above the PacificCoastal cliffs at golden hourA sheltered cove between cliffsOverlook above the coast highwayDeer on dunes at duskSnowy desert mountains at sunsetBurros by a desert lake
Environmental Policy & Management · MIIS

Real questions.
Useful tools.
Public purpose.

I’m Eliot Fisher. I bring environmental policy, research, and hands-on building together to make complicated information easier to use. It starts with a problem worth solving.

View the workWhat I’m building next ↗
Environmental policy × Practical tools On the workbench: Miradi Converter

A question, then a tool

Built for a real problem.

Selected projects / 01—02
01 / Local rules · Public access
Atlas town code search interface

Built as a way to learn with AI during my summer practicum, informed by my experience in land-use planning.

Working tool

Atlas

The problem
For East Hampton residents, finding the rule that applies to a property can mean hours spent navigating town code. The information is public; making sense of it takes work.
The solution
A town code reader that organizes local rules around the questions people need to answer, making the source easier to find and understand.
Explore next
Explore the tool and follow a question back to the town code.
Explore Atlas
02 / Ocean observing · Collaborative research
Ocean Evidence Commons research platform

Developed during my summer practicum with the Center for Ocean Leadership, UCAR.

Working prototype

Ocean Evidence Commons

The problem
Researchers compiling economic evidence for ocean observing need to connect findings across publications without losing the sources and context behind each claim.
The solution
A shared research prototype for gathering economic evidence supporting the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), with findings connected to their sources.
Explore next
Explore the prototype and examine the evidence behind a finding.
Explore Ocean Evidence Commons

From the working notebook

What comes next?

Miradi Converter started with a small frustration in my conservation coursework. Follow the idea, the proposed app, and the steps still ahead.

Explore upcoming work ↗
In development / 01

Miradi
Converter

From worksheet to conservation project.

Import working · Export in progress

Academic work

GIS analysis · policy memos & assessments

GIS & spatial analysis

Map of fixed-bottom offshore wind candidate areas
GIS analysis

Offshore Wind & Energy Hazard Siting

Fixed-bottom wind candidate areas in Northeast, South, and Puerto Rico state waters, sited against depth, substrate, and shipping lanes.

Map of critical energy infrastructure in high-risk hazard zones
GIS analysis

Critical Energy Infrastructure in Hazard Zones

An overlay of California's Central Coast — power plants, substations, and transmission lines set against earthquake, flood, and wildfire risk.

Policy memos & assessments

Building a Global Plastics Data Partnership cover page

Building a Global Plastics Data Partnership

A policy memo to The Ocean Cleanup on scaling accountability through a global plastics monitoring partnership.

New York's Offshore Wind Program Under the CLCPA cover page

New York's Offshore Wind Program Under the CLCPA

A critical analysis of South Fork, Empire, and Sunrise Wind against the Climate Act’s mandates.

Torrey Pines Climate Vulnerability Assessment cover page

Torrey Pines Climate Vulnerability Assessment

Evaluating climate risk to the Torrey Pine, Western Snowy Plover, and coastal bluff ecosystem.

From planning to practice.

Site design · Water quality

Applied work connects the research to a place, a community, and a practical decision.

Clearwater Beach parking lot CAD site plan: existing asphalt lot beside the proposed permeable crushed-stone design
Site design · Water quality

Clearwater Beach Parking Lot

A proposed permeable-paving redesign to reduce stormwater runoff into Hog Creek, carried through to a funded grant application. Construction did not proceed because of zoning complications.

Grant awarded$63,446

Studio

Things made by hand · a photo archive

The same attention to detail, off the clock — a cookbook, a set of hand-pulled fish prints, and a curated archive of coast and wildlife photography.

Eat What You Can Catch cookbook cover

Eat What You Can Catch

A cookbook built around what comes off the coast.

Gyotaku print of a cabezon

Gyotaku Prints

Three fish prints in the traditional Japanese method.

Showing 6 of 25 photographs in coast

River meeting the Pacific Ocean

From marine science to policy to the tools in between.

I spent three years in land-use planning on the East End of Long Island — zoning analyses, site plans, permitting, and representing landowners at town review boards, including a water-quality project I carried through to a $63,446 grant. Before that I studied environmental and marine science at Stony Brook, and I’ve spent ten summers as an ocean rescue lifeguard on the Atlantic coast. Today I’m at the Middlebury Institute studying environmental policy, building the data and evidence tools that tie all of it together. I expect to graduate in December 2026 with an MA in Environmental Policy and Management.

Eliot Fisher operating a rescue watercraft, East Hampton Ocean Rescue.
Ten summers with East Hampton Ocean Rescue.

The common thread is legibility: taking a zoning code, an ocean-observing budget line, or a flood-prone site and making it clear enough to act on.

FocusEnvironmental policy & management
BasedLong Island ↔ Monterey
Next milestoneMA · Expected December 2026
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