A world-renowned fisheries biologist who carried out extensive research on declining fish stocks, Ransom A. Myers died in Halifax Tuesday night at the age of 54 after a battle with brain cancer.

Known as RAM — because that's the way he initialled all his papers — Myers held the Killam chair of ocean studies at Dalhousie University.

Ransom A. Myers, who was diagnosed with brain cancer before last Christmas, died Tuesday at age 54 in Halifax.

In 2005, Myers made Fortune magazine's Top 10 list of people to watch.

The American business journal credited Myers for his research on the dramatic decline in fish species.

"Myers is working to develop new and better ways to husband the wealth beneath the sea," the magazine said.

Myers had found that 90 per cent of all large fish, including tuna and cod, have disappeared from the world's oceans. His research showed that industrial fisheries take 10 to 15 years to diminish any new fish community they encounter to a tenth of its original size.

Dr. Jeff Hutchings was a colleague of Myers both in Halifax and in St. John's, where they worked together at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in the early 1980s.

Hutchings on Wednesday said that when they first met, Myers was passionate about science generally, with a wide range of interests such as ecology and genetics.

"It wasn't perhaps until the early 1990s, with the collapse of the northern cod, that stirred up another level of passion … concerning the collapse of the fish stocks, and the importance of communicating that type of information to the public," Hutchings said.

Myers, who has worked on more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, was among the team that published an article in the Jan. 9 issue of Current Biology called "Saving endangered whales at no cost." It argued that a change in the U.S. lobster-fishing season in the Gulf of Maine could cut the number of deaths among the 350 right whales, a protected species nearly extinct in Europe, which live in the North Atlantic. Getting caught in fishing gear is a serious threat to the whales, the article said.

Myers's website at Dalhousie highlights studies on coral reefs, leatherback turtles, the status of marine populations and the wastage caused by commercial fishing. A 2005 study said that a fifth of the fish caught in the United States — 1.06 million tonnes a year — is discarded as unwanted bycatch.

Hutchings remembers Myers as much for his humanity as for his science.

"He was an incredibly caring and compassionate individual."

If anyone came to Myers for help, he would drop everything and do whatever he could for them, Hutchings said.

"If someone was in town for a seminar, they could stay at his house, and many did."