Tracey has worked on the biology of deep water fishes such as orange roughy and has spent a considerable time at sea on research ships undertaking trawl surveys to provide data for New Zealand fisheries stock assessments.
[2] She has worked on understanding the distribution, age and growth rates of deep-sea corals,[3][4][5] and contributing to benthic habitat suitability modelling studies.
In 2008–2010 she co-curated an exhibition of deep-sea corals] at Te Papa[9] and in 2016 she featured in the documentary On an unknown beach directed by Adam Luxton and Summer Agnew, which explores landscapes of ruin, including the impact of deep ocean trawling on deep sea coral ecosystems on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand.
[12][13] Tracey began her career working for the New Zealand, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) in the 1980s and she spent a lot of time at sea on research and commercial fishing vessels, often the only woman on board.
Tracey was also instrumental in helping to set up the (since closed) Greta Point Child Care Centre in the early 1990s for parents working at NIWA.