My research interests revolve around trying to understand the foraging behavior of marine mammals (primarily pinnipeds) in relation to their oceanographic environment. The physical oceanography of the coastal and open oceans shapes the food web and must ultimately affect the foraging behavior of top predators such as seals and sea lions. My research interests lie in trying to tease apart and quantify which oceanographic processes may influence foraging behavior and how they may shape foraging behaviors.

I completed my BSc (Hons) in Marine and Environmental Biology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and came to UC Santa Cruz to work for my Masters with Dan. My Masters research considered the foraging behavior of northern elephant seals in relation to oceanography, using satellite remote sensed oceanographic data. For my PhD research I am looking to further develop some of the questions raised by my MS work. Specifically considering the foraging behavior of elephant seals in relation to the thermal structure of and productivity in the water column, on a dive-to-dive basis and relating this back to a measure of foraging success over the entire migration.

In my time at UCSC so far, I have had the opportunity to travel to the Channel Islands, Mexico and Australia to work on a variety of pinniped species from elephant seals to Australian sea lions.

Simmons, S.E. (2003) Remotely sensed satellite data used to quantify factors that drive foraging in northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris): Oceanography vs. Bathymetry. Masters thesis. University of California Santa Cruz pp:52.

Simmons, S.E., Crocker, D.E., Kudela, R.M. & Costa, D.P. (2003) Remotely sensed satellite data used to quantify factors that drive foraging in northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris): Oceanography vs. Bathymetry. 15 th Biennial conference on the biology of marine mammals. Greensboro, NC.

Simmons, S.E., Crocker, D.E., Costa, D.P. (2005) Foraging strategies differ in sexually dimorphic northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris). Annual conference of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, San Diego ,CA.

Simmons, S.E., Crocker, D.E., Kudela, R.M. & Costa D.P. (2005) Time and space, the final frontiers? Foraging behavior of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) related to oceanographic features at different spatial and temporal scales. Second Biologging Conference, St. Andrews, Scotland.

Robinson, P.W., Tremblay, Y., Antolos, M., Crocker, D.E., Kuhn, C.E., Shaffer S.A., Simmons, S.E., and Costa, D.P. (submitted 2005) A comparison of indirect measures of foraging behavior based on ARGOS tracking data. Deep Sea Research (biologging conference proceedings edition).

Yann Tremblay, P.W. Robinson , M. Antolos, D. E. Crocker, C. E. Kuhn, S. A. Shaffer, S. E. Simmons and D. P. Costa (submitted). Laysan albatrosses and northern elephant seals area-restricted searching behavior described by fractal landscape analysis.

Simmons, S, E. ; Kudela, R,M.; Tremblay,Y; Crocker, D, E.; Block, B,A.; Costa, D,P. (2005). From light to green: the potential for light level sensors carried by diving marine animals to provide subsurface profiles of chlorophyll a. 16 th Biennial conference on the biology of marine mammals. San Diego, CA.