Robert A. Kinzie III

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Robert Allen Kinzie III (died December 31, 2022) was a biology and zoology professor at the University of Hawaiʻi from 1972 to 2009. A limnologist, he studied Hawaii’s stream ecosystems and the native amphidromous gobies, and he also explored coral reefs and how they interact with freshwater and respond to environmental change.

He earned a B.S. from Santa Clara University in 1963, an M.S. from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1966, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1970, with a dissertation on Discovery Bay, Jamaica’s coral reefs.

Kinzie is seen as a pioneer in Hawaii’s stream ecosystem research during the 1980s. His notable work includes the 1982 paper Life Crawls Upstream (coauthored with John I. Ford), and his studies of O’opu gobies. The paper was referenced in a 1994 natural history book and he was quoted in a BBC piece about a cliff-climbing Hawaiian fish.

He contributed to coral reef literature, including sections on soft corals in Eugene Kaplan’s field guide to Caribbean and Florida corals. He presented a 2002 paper on Caribbean contributions to coral reef science at the Fifth International Congress on the History of Oceanography, published in Oceanographic History: The Pacific and Beyond.

Kinzie served on advisory boards such as the Aquatic Resources Technical Advisory Committee for Hawaii’s Commission of Water Resource Management and the Hawaiʻi Natural Area Reserves System under the DLNR. In the late 1990s he helped with Hawaii’s natural resource protection programs.

After retiring, he worked as an environmental consultant. In 2009 he studied East Maui streams to balance freshwater use with ecosystem health, and in 2014 he collaborated with Kamehameha Schools to manage invasive species in Hale‘iwa’s Uko‘a wetland on Oahu.

Kinzie was a friend of Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and helped influence the formation of a rock band. He practiced aikido in Hawaii as a Sensei at the Windward Aikido Club in Kaneohe, and in 2005 he joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists for his distinctive long hair and beard.