Tracey T. Sutton - Oceanic Ecology Lab

Dr. Sutton is a Professor at the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, Nova Southeastern University. NSU is the largest private not-for-profit university in the state of Florida. His Oceanic Ecology Lab is located in the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach (http://www.nova.edu/ghoc/index.html).

Additionally, Dr. Sutton is Director and Principal Investigator of the DEEPEND Research Consortium (www.deependconsortium.org), a 102-member, 19-institution organization focused on the dynamics of, and human impacts on, the deep sea.  Dr. Sutton is also Director of the DEEPEND|RESTORE program, which will continue time-series analysis of the deep Gulf of Mexico begun after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He is an invited Expert Panelist on the United Nations First and Second Ocean Assessments, an Advisory Board member of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (http://dosi-project.org/), 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

Major research topics in the Oceanic Ecology Lab include:

  • The ecological structure of large deep-sea ecosystems (Gulf of Mexico, Sargasso Sea, US Atlantic Seaboard, North Atlantic, Southern Ocean)
  • Global deep-pelagic biogeography, management, and conservation
  • Food web structure and trophic interactions in deep-sea ecosystems
  • Benthic-pelagic coupling in deep-sea ecosystems (reefs, canyons, slopes, seamounts)
  • Physical oceanographic drivers of oceanic systems
  • Taxonomy and systematics of deep-sea fishes


Dr. Sutton’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the NOAA Office of Exploration and Research, the NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, the US Geological Survey, the Sloan Foundation, and the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative.