Rui Prieto is an Auxiliary Researcher at the Okeanos Institute of Marine Sciences (Un. Azores). Growing up in Brazil, Prieto was fascinated by the oceans from an early age, even though he lived four hours away from the nearest coastal town. Even before enrolling in the university, he was involved in marine research through internships with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He earned a bachelor’s in Marine Biology from the University of Algarve, Portugal, in 1997. He settled in the Azores islands where he pursued a career researching marine mammal behavior and ecology and earned his PhD in Marine Sciences. Among other achievements, he was awarded a prestigious National Geographic Explorer grant (2021). Prieto invetigates the social, behavioral, and physiological parameters of marine animals. With colleagues in the Azores Whale Lab within the Okeanos Institute, he pioneered in Portugal the use of several biologging (automatically recording data from living organisms) and biotelemetry (remotely receiving data from living organisms) tools for studying cetaceans. The resulting knowledge is instrumental to advance ecological theory and in aiding the development of policies for the sustainable use of the marine ecosystems