Naturalist
Thomas Smith
Thomas (Tom) Georges Smith was born in Quebec, Canada and received a Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from McGill University in 1971. His doctoral research, begun in 1967, was a study of the population dynamics of ringed seals on the east coast of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. He has since produced three monographs and over 150 papers and articles on Arctic and Antarctic seals and whales.
He is an honorary fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America, advisory editor on scientific journals, and is regularly consulted as a referee of scientific articles, proposals, and research programs. He is now retired from his position as head of the Marine Mammal Section at the Pacific Biological Station in British Columbia, and as a senior scientist with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. He is the owner of Eco Marine Corporation, a consulting firm involved in polar research, logistic support, and aerial surveys.
Tom is an Auxiliary Professor in the department of Renewable Resources, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Research Associate at the Mystic Marine Life Aquarium, in Mystic Connecticut, and a past Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He has given lectures in various venues around the world and is often invited to act a chair or keynote speaker at international conferences.
In the 1970's, Tom worked on Leopard seals and Killer whales in the Antarctic with the United States Antarctic Research Program and spent a year at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England. In the 1980's he worked on ringed seals and fox studies in Svalbard, Norway, and with the Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, USA, in their studies of beluga whales in Alaska. Since 1994 he has worked as a lecturer and Zodiac driver on ecotourism ships visiting the Antarctic peninsula, Falkland Islands and South Georgia.
He also works in the film and magazine industries as an outfitter and scientific advisor on natural history projects in polar regions. His recent film projects have included National Geographics Life At The Edge, Survival Anglia TV”s Whales and two shoots for BBC Wildlife”s coming series Blue Planet.
Tom and his wife Diane spend 4-6 months each year living in the Inuit village of Holman (Ulukhartok), situated on the coast of Victoria in the Canadian western Arctic . From there and other Arctic bases he conducts research on various marine and terrestrial mammals and supervises graduate student projects.