Erich Hoyt

I have spent most of my life working with whales and dolphins and other ocean creatures in more than 60 countries. I have also spent time in the rain forest — looking at ant societies and rain forest ecosystems. I love new frontiers and I see my writing as a chance to explore the outer edges of what we know about wild animals, the ocean and the Earth; to give a voice to these other lives; and to try to shape in a positive way the human relationship to wild nature.

Please feel free to visit the links on this page. The Books section gives a preview of the books I have written, with reviews collected by my publishers. The News page offers news, blogs and other posts of potential interest. See the Talks page for more about the talks and presentations I give. For downloads of my papers and excerpts from some of my books, please go to my researchgate page.

From 2023 and beyond, I plan to continue working with Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara (we co-chair the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force), deputy chair Gill Braulik, and IMMA Secretariat colleagues Simone Panigada, Margherita Zanardelli, Caterina Lanfredi, Gianna Minton, Elena Politi and others to implement the conservation tool called the “Important Marine Mammal Area”, or IMMA, which was developed with the assistance of Michael J. Tetley. The IMMA tool is designed to address the fact that whales, dolphins and other marine mammals have largely been left out of habitat protection efforts in national waters and on the high seas.

The identification and mapping of IMMAs is urgently needed and will lead to greater protection for a wide range of ocean species and habitats. IMMAs will also provide checks on existing MPAs. Are they in the right place?

For more information about our IUCN Task Force, go here. This work is being coordinated and supported through my role as research fellow with WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, an international conservation group based in the UK, US, Germany and Australia, and through Tethys Research Institute as part of a suite of projects organised by GOBI, the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative.

— Erich Hoyt