Meet Larissa Clark, former Head of Communications at eXXpedition and a key player since 2018. Riss was mostly found behind the scenes raising awareness, fostering action, and building powerful partnerships to tackle environmental challenges on land and at sea. With a colourful background in environmental justice and adventure travel, she’s a powerhouse of high-impact PR, media, and communication campaigns for mission-driven organisations through her company This Chapter PR and experiential travel journeys with her travel advisory, Another World Adventures.
Now onto her next big adventure, Larissa and her husband, Duncan Copeland, recently founded Free Range Ocean, a UK-registered not-for-profit and are on a world sailing voyage with their children Eden and Skye to use adventure sailing, citizen science and storytelling to inspire action for a healthy ocean among boating and coastal communities. We caught up with her to find out what she’s been up to!
Can you introduce yourself?
I’m Larissa Clark, a mum of two (aged six and eight), currently living on a boat with my family while sailing around the world participating in citizen science projects. I’m a member of the Explorer’s Club, Adventure Travel Association, Bluewater Cruising Association and Ocean Cruising Club which probably gives a peek into my interests! My background in communications and my fascination with people and places means I’ve shaped a life that’s enabled me to live, work and travel in many incredible corners of the world for which I am very grateful.
My journey to the ocean was unexpected. Despite a bad experience at 18 that kept me off boats for a decade, I later ran the PR for several ocean-related human rights and environmental justice projects, including plastic pollution and illegal fishing. It piqued my interest in venturing back to the ocean and during a sabbatical I joined the voyage crew of a Dutch tall ship to sail across the Atlantic to South America. It was a real period of transformation for me and I fell in love with being at sea.
That journey inspired me to co-found Another World Adventures, a travel company connecting people with extraordinary adventure experiences. While running the company, I partnered with Emily (Penn) on eXXpedition, helping connect adventure-seeking women for the crew of eXXpedition’s first all-female transatlantic scientific voyage and all the voyages after that. This evolved into a formal role as Head of Communications at eXXpedition starting with the North Pacific mission and later Round the World. Other interesting sailing and scientific research expeditions I’ve supported include Barba’s Arctic Sense and Darwin200. And in 2022 I ran the press office for an extraordinary 7,000km non-stop relay from Glasgow (COP 26 host) to Sharm el-Sheikh (COP 27 host) carrying a climate change message from the leaders of tomorrow to the leaders of today.
There’s a point where adventure travel and research expeditions intersect and I think that’s my happy place, and it’s ultimately brought me to where I am now – living with my family on our own sailboat currently in Mexico preparing to cross the Pacific! It will take us several weeks to reach our first stop in the remote Pitcairn Islands which have an extraordinary marine reserve that’s 834,000 km² big and offers protection to some of the most pristine waters and coral reefs on earth.
Picture Credit: @thefreerangecrew
Today, I combine my skills in communications with my love for travel and sustainability, working with organisations in the ocean and conservation space. My life reflects my personality: a multitasker who thrives on balancing adventure, meaningful work, and family.
What’s your superpower?
Making connections! – I love joining the dots, connecting people, opportunities and experiences that lead to change.
“The ocean can be an intimidating place – but in those moments, we are reminded of why we love the ocean, in all its forms and whatever it may bring.”
When did your passion for the ocean begin?
In a way my ocean education came quite late – if you discount the fun of jumping in waves as a kid! I’ve always been passionate about geography and conservation but I had a bad sea-going experience in Australia as a teenager, which was like a bad first date and it put me off. It took me a while to ‘go on a second date with the ocean’ if you will. I’m glad I did! It was when I started working on ocean projects in my twenties and began to better understand the complete interconnectedness of the ocean in all facets of our lives on land as well as at sea. That is when it started to become a major part of my life, and I haven’t looked back!
Even now, I still feel like I have a lot to learn, it’s a lifelong journey. It is the most powerful force on our planet and we need to maintain a healthy dose of respect for it. The ocean can be an intimidating place – but in those moments, we are reminded of why we love the ocean, in all its forms and whatever it may bring.
What has your journey been since you left eXXpedition?
As a family, we’ve always had this dream to set sail on a big adventure. Whilst living in Norway we bought a Freeranger, our 50’ ocean-going sailboat. She was on the other side of the world in Fiji so in 2023 a skipper sailed her up to the West Coast of Canada with a volunteer crew while we packed up land-life and moved to Victoria, BC to meet them and get ready for a multi-year world voyage.
Picture Credit: Nikkey Dawn
Beyond having an adventure of our own, we wanted to journey with purpose and have set up a not-for-profit organisation called Free Range Ocean which has been endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Our focus is on three key areas of action.
Firstly, contributing to, and enabling other boaters and sea-going folk to discover and participate in important ocean citizen science and community research projects around the world. To this end we have created the first global citizen science directory dedicated to ocean projects. Check it out! Find a project you can participate in or let us know if we’re missing any!
Picture Credit: Nikkey Dawn
Secondly, to advance knowledge and understanding of our global ocean by hosting local conservation initiatives, early-career marine researchers and storytellers on board Freeranger in the countries we visit during our world voyage to help super-charge their careers in conservation.
And to use Freeranger as a demonstration platform for outreach and innovation, and as a testbed for innovative research-based or green-operational maritime technologies, from simple solutions to high-tech.
The end goal? To inform, inspire and enable others to have their own positive impact on our ocean with an ‘everyone, and every action counts’ philosophy.
We love to collaborate so get in touch if any of this resonates and you’d like to connect!
Picture Credit: Nikkey Dawn
What’s the most challenging part of your journey so far?
Boats! Boats! Boats! Maintaining a safe, ocean-going vessel that you put your kids on is a huge amount of work!
Picture Credit: @thefreerangecrew
Marry that with project work, life and homeschool and we’ve got a pretty full schedule and fitting it all in is quite a challenge but achievable!
What about the most exciting?
Unquestionably, when I get to experience marine life. Every time, even if I get seasick or feel absolutely dreadful, if there’s a whisper of marine life of any description, the endorphins rush through my system and it is amazing and special.
We have had a couple of very close encounters including one with three Sei whales (third biggest whale on the planet) and a blue whale (the biggest!)
Picture Credit: Nikkey Dawn
We brought the boat to a stop because there were Humpbacks on the other side but as we turned to the other side we saw these enormous whales coming towards us, and then suddenly dropped below our boat. To be honest, it was pretty nerve-wracking, because if they actually accidentally hit the rudder it would’ve been game over for us – but it was exhilarating none the less!
“When given time, space and an ease of burden, nature has a remarkable ability to recover and thrive.”
What keeps you hopeful about the future?
Knowing the power of nature to bounce back no matter what humans seem to throw at it. When given time, space and an ease of burden, nature has a remarkable ability to recover and thrive. The combination of solving the problems that we create as humans on Earth with nature’s ability to rebound keeps me hopeful.
If you could give a message to the world, what would it be?
There’s a quote I love that I first heard when I was working almost 20 years ago with Anita Roddick (the Body Shop founder) which was “if you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been to bed with a mosquito”.
Picture Credit: @thefreerangecrew
When the problems seem huge and overwhelming, even the actions of the individual, no matter how seemingly small, do make a difference. Everyone should feel that their ‘part’ matters. So do something, do anything, but start today.
