8000 North Ocean Drive Dania Beach, FL, USA, 33004
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Tracey Sutton, PhD - Principal Investigator, Director

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Dr. Tracey Sutton is a Professor at the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, located in Dania Beach, Florida. He is currently the Director and Lead Investigator of DEEPEND (www.deependconsortium.org), a 120+-member research consortium formed in 2015 that has published over 100 scientific papers and graduated over 60 students with advanced degrees. Prior to that, Sutton led the Pelagic Nekton working group of the Census of Marine Life program MAR-ECO. He is an invited Expert Panelist on the United Nations First and Second World Ocean Assessments, an Advisory Board member of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative, and a society-elected member of the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. He is a recent (2019) recipient of the NSU Provost’s Research and Scholarship Award, given annually to a single faculty member across all NSU Colleges. He earned a Ph.D. at the College of Marine Sciences, University of South Florida, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA.

Sutton is a biological oceanographer who conducts research on oceanic ecosystem structure, marine food webs, benthic-pelagic coupling, ichthyology, taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography. He is a seagoing scientist (90 cruises) who has conducted research in a wide range of ecosystems, including the North Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Sargasso Sea, South Atlantic, Gulf of Alaska, and Southern Ocean. His research combines empirical data, numerical modeling, and theoretical ecology to understand Earth’s largest ecosystem, the deep-pelagic ocean. He has published over 130 papers to date, including discoveries of new species of fishes and a recent synthesis of the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the open-ocean biota of the Gulf of Mexico.

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Kevin Boswell, PhD - Co-Principal Investigator

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Kevin M. Boswell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and faculty member in the Marine Sciences Program at Florida International University and holds an adjunct appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. He currently runs the Fisheries Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory at Florida International University and has co-founded the SouthEast Regional Acoustics Consortium aimed at bringing awareness of acoustic technologies and processing techniques to scientists and fisheries managers in the Southeast US and greater Caribbean. His primary research interests are in marine science and fisheries ecology with emphasis on the integration of advanced sampling technologies, primarily active acoustic technologies and processing methods. His research focuses on the role of habitat (physical and hydrodynamic) in structuring coastal and marine communities at various spatial and temporal scales, the consequences of an animal’s movement and behavior among habitats, trophic interactions and alterations in refuge quantity and quality. With respect to DEEPEND, he will oversee the active acoustics component focusing on examining the biological scattering patterns throughout the water column, across the northern Gulf of Mexico.

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Heather Bracken-Grissom - Co-Principal Investigator

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My name is Heather Bracken-Grissom and I am an Associate Professor in the Biology Department and the Assistant Director of Coastlines and Oceans Division in the Institute of Environment at Florida International University. I have a molecular evolution research lab and teach Invertebrate Zoology and Oceanography at Sea. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the evolution of marine invertebrates with an emphasis on decapod crustaceans (crabs, lobsters and shrimp). This subject allows me to address issues related to their biodiversity, genetics, ecology, biogeography, development, and conservation. Much of my work has been conducted in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, western Atlantic and eastern Pacific Ocean where I have had the opportunity to help organize and participate in several major research expeditions. My current role in the DEEPEND Consortium will be to lead the crustacean and fish genetic components. This will include documentation and examination of temporal and spatial genetic diversity in the Gulf of Mexico. My interest in decapod crustaceans blossomed early during my undergraduate years at UC Santa Barbara and through my graduate (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and postdoctoral studies (Brigham Young University). When I am not in the lab, field, or office, I love participating in triathlons and almost anything outdoors related….Oh yes, I also thoroughly enjoy dining on my study subjects!

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Tammy Frank, PhD - Co-Principal Investigator

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Dr. Tammy Frank is a professor at Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center. Her educational background includes a B.S. from California State University, Long Beach, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She came to Florida in 1992 as a post-doctoral fellow at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, after post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Connecticut Medical School and Hatfield Marine Science Center in Oregon. Discovering that Florida is the only state in the continental U.S. that met her temperature requirements, she has lived in Florida ever since. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the NOAA National Undersea Research Program, and the NOAA Ocean Exploration program. She has been chief scientist on 50 research cruises, and participated on 45 more as a lucky hitchhiker, conducting work off the coasts of the Bahamas, California, the Canary Islands, Cuba, Costa Rica, Florida, Iceland, Hawaii and Samoa. Her research focus for the DEEPEND project will be analyzing the distribution patterns of deep-sea shrimp, examining geographical differences that can be correlated to environmental conditions (currents, temperatures), day vs. night abundance differences as indicators of vertical migrations, and seasonal differences to determine if there is a seasonality to their reproductive behavior. In addition to conducting her research, she teaches Anatomy and Physiology to undergraduates, and marine physiology and deep-sea biology to graduate students. .

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Heather Judkins, PhD - Co-Principal Investigator

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Dr. Heather Judkins is an associate professor in the Integrative Biology department at the University of South Florida - St. Petersburg campus. She received her Bachelors degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Rhode Island, Masters degree in Science Education from Nova Southeastern University and her PhD in Biological Oceanography from the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on cephalopods as a model group to examine the evolution, ecology, biogeography, and effects that may have occurred due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Her role in this projects involves any of the molluscs that are collected (cephalopods, pteropods, heteropods) and exploring various questions for each group- including diet studies, life history of various family groups, as well as participating in any education/outreach efforts that are a part of the DEEPEND/RESTORE project.

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Michael Vecchione, PhD - Co-Principal Investigator

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Born in a town called Neptune, Michael Vecchione went to sea as a cabin boy on a three-masted schooner in Maine at the age of 16. He completed undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Miami in 1972, and then spent four and a half years as a U.S. Army officer. He has been working on the biology, evolution, and life history of cephalopods (squids, octopods, and their relatives) since his graduate studies on planktonic molluscs during 1976-79 at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), the School of Marine Science for the College of William and Mary. After receiving the Ph.D degree there, he worked briefly for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before accepting a faculty position at McNeese State University where he studied cephalopods, zooplankton, and ichthyoplankton in addition to teaching from 1981-86. In 1986 he moved to his present position as Cephalopod Biologist at the National Systematics Laboratory (NSL), a NOAA Fisheries lab located at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) where he is an Adjunct Scientist of the Smithsonian Institution. He was Director of the NSL for 18 years. Vecchione is Curator of cephalopods and pteropods at NMNH and a Curator of the Sant Ocean Hall. He also established and served from 2000-2002 as Director of a Cooperative Marine Education and Research program at VIMS, where he is an adjunct faculty member. He has participated in 40 offshore research expeditions, 13 of them as Chief Scientist. Vecchione is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Past-President of the Cephalopod International Advisory Council. The latter awarded him a Career Achievement Award in 2018.

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April Cook - Project Manager

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April Cook is currently the Database Manager for the NOAA NRDA Offshore Nekton Sampling and Analysis Program at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center. She earned a BS in Marine Science from Coastal Carolina University and a MS in Marine Science from the College of William & Mary. Her research focuses on the biology, ecology, and community structure of deep-sea fishes. As Project Manager for DEEPEND, she will organize field sampling activities, administrate program subawards, and organize consortium meetings and reporting activities. She will also serve as Research Scientist, assisting with deep-sea fish identification and distributional analyses.