A Bay Area man made the final cut for the upcoming season of the CBS television show "Survivor," network executives announced Thursday.

Ryan Opray, a 31-year-old electrician from Los Gatos, was among the 16 names announced Wednesday morning on the CBS Early Show. The latest installment of the series will hit airwaves on Sept. 18.

Opray, who is single, was born in Redwood City, attended West Valley Junior College and later Local 332 Joint Apprenticeship Training School in San Jose to become an apprentice electrician.

He says he will be an asset to the "Morgan" tribe because of his strength and ability to build things.

This is the series' seventh season and this time the castaways will be stranded "on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean." Survivor: Pearl Islands takes place off the coast of Panama.

CBS executives said that in previous seasons, the castaways were allowed to bring a change of clothing, a bathing suit and one luxury item, but this time around, the group will be marooned with only the clothes on their back and will try to survive Panama's rainy season.

Opray isn't the first local man to make it big on the hit CBS show. In 2002, Lex Van den Burghe, a tattooed and pierced 38-year-old musician, husband and father of two from Santa Cruz, came in third on the third installment of the show, Survivor: Africa.