Erich Hoyt

Erich Hoyt (born 28 September 1950) is a whale and dolphin (cetacean) researcher, conservationist, lecturer and author of 22 books and more than 600 reports, articles and papers. His book Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (Earthscan, Taylor & Francis, 2005; 2nd edition, 2011), has been widely reviewed as the “definitive reference of the current extent of cetacean ecosystems-based management” and as “a unique and essential book for anybody interested in the conservation and protection of cetaceans. [This] definitive source on MPAs marine protected areas for cetaceans…will influence the design and management of this important and rapidly developing conservation tool.”Choice listed the book as an “Outstanding Academic Title’ for the year 2012.

Hoyt wrote the first book on whale watching, The Whale Watcher’s Handbook (Doubleday, Penguin, 1984), which zoologist—BBC-TV presenter Mark Carwardine named his number one wildlife-book classic. “When Hoyt wrote this book, he was well ahead of his time…few people had grasped the concept of whale-watching as a major, worldwide growth industry…It has been very influential over the years.” Hoyt also wrote the whale watch resolution that put whale watching on the International Whaling Commission (IWC) agenda in the 1990s. That book, as well as his first book about his seven summers in the 1970s and 1980s with killer whales, or orcas, are considered classic whale texts.Orca: The Whale Called Killer is still in print after more than 30 years.

Among his other books are five written for children and six academic books. Two popular volumes on social insects, The Earth Dwellers, (Simon & Schuster, 1996) and Insect Lives (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002, with Smithsonian entomologist Ted Schultz) broke new ground. In Hoyt’s “delightful…multi-layered”The Earth Dwellers, the “ant’s eye view of life works spectacularly” as Hoyt “fashions the ants into enchanting characters” charting “an insect’s course through sex, aggression and foreign policy”.Insect Lives, an American Library Association “Outstanding Book for the College Bound” is a “potpourri of fascinating excerpts written by some of the finest insect biologists and naturalists spanning many centuries.” A deep sea book called Creatures of the Deep (Firefly, 2001) won the American Society of Journalists & Authors, Inc. Outstanding Book Award, General Nonfiction. A second deep sea book, Weird Sea Creatures, this time for children, has been published in 2013.

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