Dr. Stace Beaulieu is a Senior Research Specialist in the Biology Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Her specialty is deep-sea benthic invertebrates, including surveying and sampling to assess biodiversity, distribution, and abundance. She previously served as coordinator of the InterRidge (2007-2009) and Ridge 2000 (2010-2012) program offices and currently coordinates WHOI’s Ocean Informatics initiative. When she was about 6 years old, she became interested in the deep sea and kept that interest through undergraduate studies at Stanford University and graduate studies at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, earning a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography. She has been working at WHOI since 1998.
Beaulieu has 25 years of seagoing experience, including dives to the abyssal plain and hydrothermal vents in the human-occupied vehicles Alvin and Shinkai 6500. Her research at deep-sea vents includes studies of re-colonization after volcanic eruptions and dispersal of larvae between vents in the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. She updates the InterRidge Global Database of Active Submarine Hydrothermal Vent Fields and presently serves on the international sFDvent Working Group to build a global functional trait database for hydrothermal vent ecosystems.
