In a moment that reflects both the close-knit community of scuba diving and serendipitous encounters, a young Caymanian dive instructor came face to face last week with a new International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame inductee whose gift to him of a mask and snorkel when he was a child helped set him on his career path.
While accepting her award as one of the four new international inductees to the hall of fame on Saturday night, Margo Peyton, founder of Family Dive Adventures and Kids Sea Camp, told of often seeing local kids on the dock at Cobalt Coast when she would come to Cayman to hold camps to teach children to dive.
On this, her most recent visit to Cayman, she returned to Cobalt Coast and walked into the Divetech shop, where she encountered Kameron D’Hue behind the counter.
“I introduced myself … I was looking starry eyed around the resort and told him I used to come here a long time ago with the Kids Sea Camp and I would have all this gear for the kids,” she said.
D’Hue told her he was one of the kids that used to hang out on the dock, saying they would often be chased away.
“I said, you know, I never chased anyone off the dock,” Peyton said. “In fact, I would have extra gear, snorkels and masks, and at the end of the week, I would come down to the dock and there would be always be four or five kids that would be hanging around and jumping off the dock.
“He looked at me and said ‘I was one of those kids. You are the lady who gave me that mask and snorkel set. That’s why I’m here today.”
D’Hue, a former recipient of the Bob Soto Memorial Scholarship, last year’s local emerging honouree at the hall of fame and currently a dive instructor at Divetech, was one of the MCs for the glitzy evening of awards and speeches at Hotel Indigo on Saturday.
Like all Divetech staff in attendance, D’Hue was dressed in pink to show support for his boss Joanna Mikutowicz, owner of the West Bay-based dive company, whose signature colour is pink.
Mikutowicz, Barbara ‘Barbie’ MacDowell, Andrew Ebanks and the late Captain Ertis Ebanks were the four local honourees who were recognised on Saturday night.
As well as Peyton, three other international leaders in the dive industry were inducted into the hall of fame on Saturday: John Thet, of Singapore, who is co-founder of Asian Geographic Magazine and publisher of Scuba Diver AustralAsia, and operates Asia’s longest running dive trade expo – Asia Dive Expo (ADEX); Claudio Guardabassi, who helped develop the diving industry in Brazil; and Enric Sala, marine conservationist and National Geographic‘s explorer-in-residence.
Dan Orr, former CEO of the Divers Alert Network, gave the keynote address. While it focused on older divers, Orr advised those who eventually stop diving to act as mentors for new and young divers, who he said were the future of the industry, and the key to keeping the health of reefs in the public eye.
Tributes were also paid to two much-loved and much-missed stalwarts of the local diving industry who passed away in September – Kent Eldemire and Thomas Shropshire.
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