Roxanne Beltran

We can thank the open ocean for facilitating our life on the planet, because it produces more than half of Earth’s oxygen, regulates the global climate, and provides food and livelihoods for billions of people. My research takes place in the open ocean – thousands of miles offshore and hundreds of meters beneath the ocean surface. But the open ocean is one of the least understood places on our planet; in fact, we know less about it than we know about the surface of the moon.

To study ocean health and its changes through time, my team and I attach state-of-the-art miniaturized technologies to naturally migrating seals. This type of ocean exploration allows us to reach expanses and depths at a finer resolution than ever before. My team’s research has shown that seals are ideal ecosystem sentinels for the open ocean because information about the amount of fish they find and eat can produce valuable insight into the state of the ocean.

I feel incredibly lucky that my research has taken me from the Galapagos to the Arctic circle and down to the sea ice of Antarctica. When I was a graduate student, I had the privilege of visiting Antarctica 7 times to collect data on the behavior, survival, and physiology of Weddell seals. My research involved traveling many miles on the sea ice in snow machines, and flying vast distances in helicopters, searching for individually tagged seals so I could keep track of where the seals spent their time and when. I’ll never forget the magic of seeing orcas and penguins frolicking along ice cracks as the sun moved closer and closer to the horizon near the end of the Antarctic summer, casting colorful shadows on the ice below. I have crisp memories of the pristine ice as far as the eye could see, and the serene silence punctuated occasionally by the vocalizations of the seal pups communicating with their moms.