Dr. Ruth Perry is a Marine Scientist and Regulatory Policy specialist responsible for offshore marine environmental policy for Shell Exploration and Production Americas teams. In this capacity, Perry integrates marine science and ocean technology into regulatory policy advocacy and decision-making in the areas of marine sound, marine spatial planning, ocean observing, and marine mammal and life science, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. Perry is also responsible for helping Shell to develop public-private science collaborations, such as real-time monitoring programs, to improve industry’s knowledge of the offshore marine environment. Ruth also works with the oil and gas industry trade associations’ to develop and implement joint industry programs for offshore environmental monitoring and to help increase understanding of the effect of sound on marine life generated by oil and gas exploration and production activities. Her recent projects with Shell include working with NOAA and University of Southern Mississippi to deploy autonomous underwater vehicles to better understand oceanographic environment relative to storm and hurricane intensity and establishing a long term deep sea (~3000m) time series station to monitor ocean water column at Shell’s Stones project.

Previously, Perry was a research scientist with the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System and Geochemical and Environmental Research Group at Texas A&M University, where she was worked on the implementation of a regional glider network, developing ocean science outreach for coastal communities, and incorporating geospatial techniques with remote sensing and ocean observing to study Gulf environmental hazards, such as hypoxia, and the effect of physical ocean processes on marine mammal distributions. Ruth has over 10 years of ocean technology research and system implementation, field experience and ocean policy analysis , including research cruises to monitor coastal hypoxia and the offshore physical environment, deploying and operating ocean observing systems and marine mammal observing in the Gulf of Mexico, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands.

Perry, who earned a doctorate in Oceanography from Texas A&M University in 2013, joined Shell in 2014 and is based in Houston.