Culture in 70% of the World Involves Being In or Under the Water 

Call it Snorkeling or Freediving, it is a sport most families could enjoy together. While it will be more fun, more rapidly, if you begin with an instructor for at least one pool session for basic skills, snorkeling is close to intuitive for many people, meaning this is an adventure you can enjoy almost immediately.

If you live in America, top destinations for Snorkel Adventures include Key Largo, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, the Blue Heron Bridge Marine Park, Grand Cayman, and the Bahamas. Most of these destinations have great snorkel sites right off of a beach, and each of them can offer even bigger adventures if you go out on a charter boat for snorkeling.

The girl in the photo has dropped to about 40 feet deep, along a reef that drops to 55 feet deep. The ease with which she does this, is evident by her smiling face, but this kind of snorkeling can take a year or more of actual training, to get you to this level of comfort at 40 or 50 feet deep.

In some ways, you could compare 50 foot deep Snorkeling, to learning to Snow Ski. This is the Double Diamond run, that some skiers practiced for years before they could accomplish easily. The Bunny Slope or Novice Runs are the places new skiers go to have fun right away. In Snorkeling or Freediving, the Novice sites are easy to find. Each of the destinations mentioned above have them, and this just leaves you with deciding on "what kind of a novice you want to be"...just like at a ski slope, but for alot less money, and actually it is alot easier to snorkel than to ski.

In Palm Beach County Florida, there is a program called Project Seahorse for Kids....It runs through the County and City Camp programs in the summer, and it takes both non-swimming and good swimming kids. The kids that swim well, start right off with a top snorkeling instructor to learn everything in the PADI Skin Diver course and more. The non-swimming kids, get a swim instructor to teach them swimming, so that they can then transition to the snorkel instruction. In Early August, all the kids in these camps get to Snorkel in the ocean at a spectacular site. Have a look at the video!

In 2017, Project Seahorse For Kids will be adding Adults to the training, and entire families, with programs that will run year round.

The gear for a child can easily be less than $50, and adults don't need to spend a great deal more than that...though the girl in this photo has about $200 into mask, freedive fins and a snorkel. The fancy wetsuit is about that much again. But this gear can last for over a decade, and few family activities can pack this much excitement, for such a small investment. For help finding a Snorkel Destination in Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale Fl, look for our next post!

Kids that went through the program in the last 3 years, typically get far more interested in school as they now feel directly connected to the marine ecosystem, and enjoy asking their teachers about all the science issues their time underwater introduced them to.