Randy Olson

Olson partnered in 2019 with surf photographer Brian Bielmann and filmmaker Brent Storm to help produce the documentary feature White Rhino. The film documents the three massive swells that hit Fiji and Tahiti in 2011-12.

In 2008 Olson wrote and directed the mockumentary feature film, Sizzle, which premiered on the west coast of the U.S. at the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and on the east coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival.

In 2006, Olson directed the feature documentary, Flock of Dodos. The film drew on both his evolutionary biology background and his Kansas upbringing to analyze the question of evolution in his home state. Flock of Dodos premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, in April 2006, and since then has played at film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. The film aired on Showtime in the US.

Olson went through the graduate film production program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, earning his M.F.A. in 1997. For his student film he wrote and directed the twenty-minute musical comedy short film, You Ruined My Career, starring Carol Hatchett, one of Bette Midler's Harlettes. The film premiered at the 1996 Telluride Film Festival in the "Filmmakers of Tomorrow" showcase.

In 1988 Olson was appointed a professor in the Zoology Department at the University of New Hampshire. His research on the dispersal of larvae of marine organisms on coral reefs has been described as "some of the best work in that field". During his time at UNH Olson also produced several short films on marine life, such as Barnacles Tell No Lies, Lobstahs, and Salt of the Earth. Salt of the Earth was shown on a local PBS station. After being awarded tenure in 1994, Olson took a leave of absence to attend film school, eventually resigning his scientific position.

He returned to Townsville, Australia as a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, working for the Australian government studying the problem of the crown-of-thorns starfish and its destructive effect on the Great Barrier Reef. In 1985 he visited the U.S. research station in Antarctica at McMurdo Sound for his research on starfish reproduction which involved scuba dives beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

He was accepted to Harvard University's Ph.D. program in biology. His dissertation research took him to Australia in the early 1980s studying coral reef ecology on the Great Barrier Reef. While conducting his research he spent an entire year living on Lizard Island on the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. He earned his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Harvard in 1984.

Richard Randolph "Randy" Olson (born October 3, 1955) is a marine biologist-turned-filmmaker who earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University (1984) and became a tenured professor of marine biology at the University of New Hampshire (1992) before changing careers by moving to Hollywood and entering film school at the University of Southern California.

Olson was born in Heidelberg, Germany, the son of Colonel John Eric Olson, West Point graduate (class of 1939). When he was 4 years old his family moved to Hawaii, where they lived for four years. Olson credits his time near the ocean in these years with his eventual career as a marine biologist. Olson's family subsequently moved to Virginia, then Kansas City, Kansas where he attended high school and began college at the University of Kansas.