Thomas Byrnes, Ph.D.

Tom is the director and manager of Cayman Marine Lab. He has been diving since 1973 and has amassed some 10000 dives. He is also a NAUI instructor with a commercial fishing and building background. Tom received his 25-Ton Captains License in 1976 and has logged many thousands of hours operating boats. He received a doctorate in marine biology from the University of New England while living in Australia where he continued to carry out research resulting in over 20 scientific publications in journals throughout the world. Tom then joined the faculty of Hofstra University in New York where it was his duty to run a marine laboratory in Jamaica. After one year he had decided to start his own marine lab where college groups could study as well as where tourist divers could learn more about the fascinating things they were seeing. The time was right, and Grand Cayman was perfect, so a niche was filled and Cayman Marine Lab took off. CML also works as a consultant with various scientific production organizations such as the BBC and National Geographic as well as numerous others.

Nutty

Nutty is a pure bred Jack Russell Terrier. She arrived in Grand Cayman about 14 years ago and at the time, Tom felt there must have been some mistake - Tom's family was supposed to get a dog but surely this was some sort of Tasmanian Devil! The dog just had too much energy. She was kicked out of obedience school and shortly afterwards out of the house - they made double sure to lock the doors too. Then it happened, one day, out of the blue, the dog was transformed into a quiet, well-mannered canine, just lying there on the deck behaving. Tom was overjoyed and even began to think that perhaps he hadn't made such a bad call; after all, he had picked the breed.  That all came to an end about four hours later when a neighbor came over to see how Nutty was after being run over by a car that morning. Oh, so that was the secret! But Tom just didn't have the heart to back over her every day, so he decided on a different tactic.. take her to work each day. Nutty has found her true calling and you'd be hard pressed to find a better sea dog or maritime companion. In fact, Nutty is now retired but is still more popular than the rest of the staff.