Enrique Montes is a Research Associate in biological oceanography at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida. Montes moved to the United States with a Fulbright fellowship in 2006 for his Ph.D. at the University of South Florida and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and completed his degree in 2011. He studies physical and biological drivers of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen cycling in the ocean, and how these cycles affect marine ecosystems across time and space.
Montes studies these processes using measurements of sinking particulate matter with moored and free-drifting sediment traps, dissolved nutrients and gases, and composition and abundance of phytoplankton. His research relies on satellite observations to scale in situ measurements to broader temporal and spatial domains. Montes is involved in the development of a pilot Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) co- sponsored by NASA and NOAA-IOOS. His current research seeks to understand how natural processes and human activities drive changes in the biodiversity of coastal and open ocean habitats using dynamic biogeographic seascapes derived from satellite data, bio-optical measurements and genomics. Montes is leading the development of the MBON Pole-to-Pole of the Americas, a collaborative regional effort aimed at implementing a framework for detecting and understanding biodiversity change across marine habitats of the Americas, from the Arctic to Antarctica.