(Robert) Erich Hoyt (born September 28, 1950) is a whale and dolphin (cetacean) researcher, conservationist, lecturer and author of 26 books and more than 700 reports, articles and papers.

[This] definitive source on MPAs marine protected areas for cetaceans…will influence the design and management of this important and rapidly developing conservation tool.

[7] Since 2013, as Research Fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) and IUCN SSC/WCPA Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force co-chair with Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Hoyt has focussed on the creation and development of the new conservation tool of Important Marine Mammal Areas, or IMMAs.

[9] "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.

[22] He also leads WDC's Global Marine Protected Areas Programme launched in 2008 by Team Russia as part of the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race.

The research and conservation project Hoyt co-founded and has co-led since 1999, the Far East Russia Orca Project, has pioneered visual and acoustic monitoring, training of Russian students, and whale conservation in the remote, inhospitable Kamchatka seas, and has produced a number of papers on the communication and behavioural ecology of killer whales.

"[29][31] This work, as well as the supporting website (http://www.cetaceanhabitat.org) "details the current state of cetacean conservation globally"[32] identifying and helping to conserve whale, dolphin and other important biologically diverse habitats in marine reserves and protected areas in the national waters of the world and on the high seas (international waters).