Dr Patrick (Paddy ) Ryan teaches Biology and Invertebrate Zoology at the Metropolitan State University of Denver and at the Colorado School of Mines where he teaches ecology. He has been a photographer since he got his first camera, a box brownie, at the age of seven and has been passionate about nature for nearly as long. On leaving high school, Paddy spent a year in Sarawak, in East Malaysia, as a school-leaver volunteer with New Zealand's Volunteer Service Abroad and then attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch before teaching at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji for ten and half years. On return to New Zealand in 1988 he worked as a freshwater biologist and environmental planner before becoming a freelance environmental consultant and photographer. He moved to Thornton, Colorado in 1997 to join his (now ex) wife Kathy. He has two daughters, Sarah and Lucy . He is a PADI divemaster with around 1400 dives and is a certified personal trainer.