Born on Feb. 9, 1935 in London, Martin Thomas spent much of his childhood in the countryside of England and Wales, where his grandfather was a mine operator. It was here that his love of nature was born - along with an understanding of acute threats to the environment.

He attended the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle Upon Tyne, and went on to the University of Durham, where he specialised in marine biology and also studied botany. Thomas supported himself through university by working in the Territorial Army, in which he served as Quartermaster Sergeant in the Royal Engineers.

After graduation in 1956 with a first class honours degree, he embarked on a ship bound for Canada—where he had spent two years as a child in Montreal and Toronto when his father was sent to work for Proctor & Gamble. His first job, with the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, saw him join a research team set up to control the spread of parasitic sea lampreys throughout the Great Lakes. After several years, Thomas took educational leave and studied for a Master of Science in Agriculture, with a focus on fisheries, at the Ontario Agricultural College, later the University of Guelph.

After graduation, Thomas went to work at the Fisheries Research Board oyster culture station at Ellerslie, Prince Edward Island, where he studied the effects of herbicides and other chemicals on shellfish. He also began investigating ecological changes responsible for the development of so-called “relict” populations, such as the Atlantic oyster. He was awarded Honorary Life Membership in the New York Academy of Sciences for his work. He also studied snakes and breeding bird surveys.

In 1970, he graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax with a PhD after researching the ecology of organisms in a Prince Edward Island estuary. Notably, Thomas was one of the first volunteer scientists on the scene of one of the world’s first large oil spills in the region - the Arrow disaster, in which an oil-laden tanker struck a rock in Chedabucto Bay, Cape Breton, and broke in two, contaminating a stretch of shoreline. Responsible for dealing with the spill’s biological effects on the shoreline, Thomas witnessed and worked to alleviate the disaster’s fallout for several years.

Thomas was offered a faculty position at the University of New Brunswick in 1970, charged with establishing a marine biology programme at its new Saint John campus. He remained there for 25 years, teaching a wide range of biology, botany and ecology courses. During this time, he began to teach and do research in Bermuda. His first book, Introducing the Sea, was used in several field-courses. He supervised graduate students, several of whom worked in Bermuda on research topics ranging from studies of marine ponds to coffee bean snails.

In tandem with his Bermuda visits, Thomas’s work in the Bay of Fundy, particularly in the area of intertidal and estuarine ecology, earned him a grant from Sony Corporation and fostered his second book, Marine and Coastal Systems of the Quoddy Region, New Brunswick. In 1994, Thomas was awarded the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy Visionary Award.

His involvement with Bermuda increased over the years, including teaching and research through the Bermuda Biological Station and later the Bermuda Zoological Society/Bermuda Aquarium Museum & Zoo. He has worked and published on topics from mangrove oysters to boiler reefs and rocky shores. With colleague Alan Logan, he published A Guide to the Ecology of Coastal and Shallow Water Marine Communities of Bermuda in 1992. During this period, his interest expanded to include all Bermudian ecosystems and habitats: marine, freshwater and terrestrial.

Thomas retired in 1995, and has spent recent years focusing his research on Bermuda, particularly producing educational materials which interpret the island’s natural history for students of all ages. His work has produced seven books in the Project Nature Series, published by BZS. Topics include: wetlands, forests, coral reefs, island ecology, shallow bays and seagrass beds, Harrington Sound, and the open sea around Bermuda. Under the sponsorship of BZS, he has also run an annual teacher-training course for educators from Bermuda, the US and the Caribbean.

Thomas’s publications include about 100 scientific papers, chapters in scientific books and technical reports and 10 books.

His wife, Mary Lou Harley, is a chemist currently studying the management of long-term nuclear waste in Canada. They have three daughters. Outside his research and writing, Thomas, who lives in Port Williams, Nova Scotia, enjoys gardening, photography and wine- and beer-making.