Celebrating the career of Tony Smith
This year, our most prestigious award recognises the career of Tony Smith, whose work revolutionised how we approach fish population dynamics and management.
Tony Smith coined the phrase “management strategy evaluation” in a 1994 paper.
Our K. Radway Allen Award winner for 2022 is Dr Anthony (Tony) D.M. Smith, AM.
Tony’s work has fundamentally changed the field of fish population dynamics and management. Among his most important contributions are his roles in the development of management strategy evaluation and scientific methods for ecosystem-based fishery management.
Indeed, Tony literally coined the phrase “management strategy evaluation” (MSE) in his 1994 paper presented at ASFB (and published in the subsequent proceedings). MSE is now considered world’s best practice for conducting strategic evaluations of management systems, in no small part due to Tony’s pioneering work.
Another of his outstanding achievements has been his influence across Australia in creating many opportunities for collaborations with other stock assessment scientists during a time of high competitiveness for funding. The outcome of these collaborations is probably the single most important initiative for advancing the area of stock assessments throughout Australia rather than jurisdictions working in isolation.
Tony began his career with a science degree at the University of Adelaide, with a strong marine science bent, followed by a PhD at the University of British Columbia in Canada, focusing on adaptive management of fisheries. A 10-year “diversion” took his mathematical and research skills to various other fields, including agriculture, epidemiology and entomology. Then, in 1989, he returned to the fisheries fold, as a resource assessment modeller at CSIRO.
Tony has published well over 100 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and, according to Google Scholar, these papers have been cited over 16,000 times, making him one of the most cited researchers in the field of fisheries.
Tony retired from CSIRO in 2016 and is currently a CSIRO honorary research fellow and an adjunct professor at the University of Tasmania. Although retired, he continues to serve the profession through his involvement in state and Commonwealth scientific committees. Tony was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2011 for contributions to fishery science and management.
The K. Radway Allen Award is ASFB’s most prestigious award. Inaugurated in 1995, it is named after the renowned fisheries biologist Kenneth (‘Kay’) Radway Allen. Kay was a pioneering researcher who worked across multiple fields and whose impact still resonates today. His long and distinguished career spanned 70 years and three continents, characterised by a pioneering approach and the impact of its results, and marked by a generosity of spirit treasured by his colleagues.