FYI. Here’s title and abstract from Miguel --the whales technically even make it bio 😊 Title: Geophysical and biological applications of distributed optical fiber sensing in the oceans Miguel González-Herráez / Spanish Council for Research (CSIC) Abstract: Submarine optical fiber cables are nowadays the most important infrastructure of international communications, carrying over 99% of the intercontinental data traffic. These critical infrastructures for communications also have a strong potential for geophysical and biological monitoring in the bottom of the oceans, relying on Brillouin and Rayleigh scatterings. In this talk, I will review our work on oceanographic and biological monitoring using distributed optical fiber sensing over submarine fiber cables. I will show that Brillouin and Rayleigh distributed fiber sensors can be used to obtain information of ocean dynamics, including accurate observations of surface waves, currents, and tides, and all the associated nonlinear phenomena driving water mixing, which have a strong impact in climate change estimations. Moreover, these systems can also be used to track large mammals (e.g. fin whales, blue whales) by hearing and localizing their vocalizations. Speaker short bio: Miguel González-Herráez received the M.Eng. and D.Eng. degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In October 2004, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in June 2006 and to Full Professor in December 2018. In September 2025 he has taken a position as Full Professor in the Spanish Council for Research (CSIC), the Spanish research-only national-level institution. He is the author or coauthor of >150 papers in international refereed journals and >180 conference contributions and has given >25 invited/plenary talks at prestigious international conferences. His research interests cover the wide field of nonlinear interactions in optical fibers, with particular focus on distributed optical fiber sensing. Prof. González-Herráez has received several important recognitions to his research career, including the European Research Council Starting Grant, the “Miguel Catalan” prize for young scientists given by the regional government of Madrid and the “Agustin de Betancourt” prize of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering.