Kameron D’Hue spent his summers splashing in the water off a West Bay dock with his friends. He used to watch the SCUBA boats pull up at the pier and would even help them carry tanks and equipment.
“I would always ask them questions: Did they see sharks? What was it like down there?” he said.
At that time, it didn’t occur to him to take up diving as a hobby or a career; not until he attended Inspire Cayman.
The trade school is more commonly associated with construction, plumbing and electrical jobs as well as its work-readiness schemes, but Kameron was attracted by the chance to train to be a dive instructor.
He took the plunge in 2019 and has never looked back.
“It was euphoria. I was hooked right away,” he said of his first taste of the underwater world.
“I was like a kid in a candy store.”
Completing classroom training at Inspire Cayman and working on boats, first with Aaron Hunt at Eco Divers and later with Ash McKnight at GoPro Diving, he qualified as an Open Water Diver before going all the way up the scale to Divemaster – a level which qualifies him to work in the industry and guide qualified divers.
He was about to take the next step – becoming an instructor – when COVID hit, meaning the examiner from the Professional Association of Dive Instructors could not get to the island to allow him to take his assessment and final exam.
The obstacle didn’t put him off.
“I had decided at that point that this is what I want to do. This is my career,” said the 23-year-old.
McKnight at GoPro Diving hired him as a deckhand and his training continued.
After a long wait, he was able to take his exams earlier this year and qualified as a fully-fledged professional dive instructor – one of very few Caymanians to do so in recent times. With tourists beginning to return to the island, he has already been busy.
Inspiration
Even when the days are long and the work is taxing, he is happy to have found something he loves, after years of drifting between jobs.
There are days when you are soaking wet just with sweat – you haven’t even been in the water,” he said. “The boat needs to be cleaned, the tanks need to be filled, the engine needs to be repaired.”
But the pleasure outweighs the pain.
“It hardly feels like work at all. I am paid to do something I love,” he added.
He’s trying to pass on his passion to others, sharing his enthusiasm with the kids on his youth soccer team.
One of the reasons he believes there are so few Caymanian dive instructors, is that young people don’t see others like them doing the job.
“When you don’t see family or friends doing it, you don’t think of it as a career,” he said.
Compared to tourists or people who come here from colder, landlocked countries, he wonders if he sometimes took the islands’ beauty for granted.
“When you are born here, sometimes the water is just the water,” he said.
He hopes to change that and be an inspiration for other Caymanians to get into the business. He said the support of Inspire Cayman had helped him see an opportunity he had never imagined before and now he has ambitions to, one day, run his own business.
Michael Myles, the founder of the trade school, said his aim was to get more young people like Kameron into sustainable careers. He believes there are hundreds of opportunities – outside of the traditionally coveted banking and office jobs – for Caymanians to earn good wages doing something they enjoy.
He said he would continue to support Kameron in whatever way he could.
“Kameron is a dynamic young man who is driven to succeed. We are proud of his accomplishment and excited to be part of his journey.”
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This is great and hopefully more young men and women will follow