Dr. Hardy-Smith completed his veterinary training at the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1987. Working as a crayfish diver and fisherman on the Great Barrier Reef in Northern Australia first gave him an appreciation of the need for aquaculture. To gain more practical experience in production, Dr. Hardy-Smith traveled to Canada in 1991 and worked as a salmon farmer on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. Realising the importance of this area of food production, Dr. Hardy-Smith returned to Australia to complete his Graduate Diploma in Aquaculture at Deakin University, and take up a position as the Aquaculture Veterinarian for the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries in 1995.
In this position Dr. Hardy-Smith covered field monitoring and surveillance of the salmonid industry in that State, and was also involved in the Pacific oyster, abalone and developing southern crayfish industry. The scope of the position was wide - diagnostics, treatments, policy and regulation with regards to aquaculture, and also involvement at the National level in developing exotic disease strategy policy and import/export guidelines. Dr. Hardy-Smith was also involved in developing biosecurity policy for the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute, which is heavily involved in developing new species for aquaculture.
In 1999, Dr. Hardy-Smith joined Heritage Salmon Limited as the Production Veterinarian for the Company. Heritage is involved in the production of Atlantic salmon on Vancouver Island, Canada. In this position Dr. Hardy-Smith ran the fish health management section of the company and gained extensive knowledge of how to manage diseases such as IHN (Infectious Haematopoietic Necrosis) and product quality diseases such as Kudoa thrysites.
Dr. Hardy-Smith is on the Board of Directors for the Salmon Health Consortium, a national association promoting the prudent, safe and effective use of therapeutants in Canadian salmonid aquaculture. He has also presented widely on fish health management issues, to the level of the OIE (World Animal Health Organisation) in Paris. He regularly teaches, running courses in Aquaculture and Aquatic Animal Health for the Post Graduate Foundation in Veterinary Science based at the University of Sydney, Australia. The Foundation is involved in the continuing education of veterinarians in Australia and the Asian Pacific region. The courses provided by the Foundation cover the culture of finfish (food and ornamental), mollusks and crustracea. Dr. Hardy-Smith also teaches each year at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Melbourne that is one of the few Universities to have aquatic animal health included in all four years of the Program.
