Twenty-five years ago, avid diver Margo Peyton had a dream: To create a living classroom for her young son and daughter where they could experience the wonders of the ocean together as a family.
Peyton’s personal dream led her to start Kids Sea Camp, a family dive travel operator that offers PADI programs for kids as young as four—and Junior Open Water certification for children starting at age 10. Kids Sea Camp isn’t just a business; it’s personal. Peyton’s company has since touched the lives of thousands and thousands of families, and has ushered in a new generation of ocean ambassadors by dive certifying more than 8,100 youth.
Peyton’s energy and sheer dedication to educating children and passion for protecting the ocean has created big waves in the dive industry. She’s been unstoppable, despite facing many obstacles.
Peyton’s story with the ocean began in her own childhood. She grew up in Provincetown, MA on Cape Cod to an Portuguese-American mother and father. Her father, Edward Salvador, was a retired United States army officer, and a self-taught diver with no affiliated agency rating. He was doing recreational diving back in the ‘50s and ‘60s when it was an activity done only largely by NAVY Seals. He poured his own lead weights and made his own mask back then. Her father provided the family with clams, lobster, and crab from his dives. When Peyton was young in the ‘70s, she recalls her dad setting her in a shallow tidal pool with his mask on so she could experience breathing from his regulator. She grew up with the ocean as her companion.
Overcoming Limiting Expectations
Peyton’s mother battled health issues for over three decades, and was unable to be present for most of her childhood. While she was was raised mostly by her dad, Peyton credits much of her tenacity and strength to her mother. It was her father who instilled in her a love for the ocean, and in the ‘80s for her 19th birthday, provided her a set of dive gear.
Peyton’s father was extremely ambitious, running a family-owned oil company on Cape Cod. The custom in her family was that the son—her brother—was taught about and expected to take over the family business, while Peyton was encouraged to be more traditional in the way of being a homemaker, wife, and mother. Peyton, however, had grown up with her entrepreneurial father as a roll model, and her curiosity about the ocean and the world had given her a drive to travel and build a business of her own.
“My dad contributed to my strong drive as I wanted to prove him wrong, because he always told me I shouldn’t be going to college, and that I should be a more domesticated, such as by focusing on doing somethig like being a homemaker or maybe a secretary,” Peyton recalls.
Rather than accepting limiting opinions that her father tried to instill upon her because that was how he was raised, Peyton found it within herself to break free of the expectations of others and blaze her own path. She got PADI certified in 1989. She went to college for travel and tourism. She moved to the Cayman Islands to work at a dive travel agency in the ‘90s before moving to Florida to start her own dive travel business.
Women Supporting Women
On a business trip in 1999, she met Carolyn Pascal, a pioneer for women in diving who became the first woman publisher of Skin Diver magazine and was later inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame. By this time Margo had a young son and daughter back at home who she was missing, and Pascal could relate as she herself had a young daughter.
The idea for Kids Sea Camp started on a beach of course, and was later born out of a Peyton’s personal passion to bring her kids diving with her and a budding friendship with Pascal whose mentorship and connections would open doors for her. In the early 2000s when Peyton was still running a dive travel company for adults and talking with Pascal about how she wanted to start a family dive tour company where parents and grandparents could dive with their kids, Pascal saw an opportunity in the market.
“A key to our partnership is just how much I truly believed in the idea of Kids Sea Camp because I had a young daughter too and saw the potential,” says Pascal. “I saw it before a lot of other people in the industry saw it, which was male dominated at the time.”
So Pascal began connecting Peyton with family-friendly dive resorts. This was key, because most dive resorts didn’t want to take on the risk of certifiing children.
“Carolyn had already been in the industry for 15 years longer than myself, and every step of the way, she would put people in my path that would help me get to that next level,” says Peyton. “It wasn’t just me who Carolyn helped. She was powerful and driven, and she used her platform to pay it forward to help other women and small businesses who might not have had what it would take to play as a small fish in a big pond.”
Pascal introduced Peyton to another woman powerhouse in diving around 2005, Theresa Kaplan, who was managing the PADI Diving Society at the time and today is vice president, global membership and B2B marketing for PADI Worldwide. Kaplan recalls how Peyton described the very real problem diving faces: “People get certified in their 20s before having children and they dive a lot. Then they start having families and life priorities take them away from the sport. Margo was finding a way to not only bring those parents back into diving, but to bring their families in as well.”
Making Dive Culture More Family Friendly
In 2000, Peyton started Kids Sea Camp, and hosted her first Kids Sea Camp in 2001 in Curacao. Twenty-five years later, Peyton has built a global network of family-friendly dive resorts with 20-plus trips a year that reflect her high safety standards and has established an industry-leading standard for child safety and training.
The business is women-owned and family run. Her husband Tom Peyton is Vice President of Kids Sea Camp and co-founder of Ocean Wishes, which gives dive scholarships and grants for children around the world to become divers. Their son Robbie, a PADI staff instructor and tech diver, is head of reservations and sales for Kids Sea Camp, and their daughter Jen is a PADI dive instructor as well until she recently had a baby of her own. The mission of their trips seems to be to build relationships as much as it is to inspire a love for the ocean.
The Peytons’ emphasis on connection and creating communities of care has a ripple effect for many of the Kids Sea Camp attendees. “Tom and Margo bring positivity and light up a room, and it’s something that has shaped me into the person who I want to be,” says Nicolas Franchini, 23, from New York who was just 10 years old when he got PADI certified at his first Kids Sea Camp in the Cayman Islands. “The way that Tom and Margo conduct themselves by showing love to so many people is something I try to do in my everyday life, because I see how infectious it is and want to translate that to others.”
Kaplan also talks about the Kids Sea Camp magic firsthand: her own daughter first attended Kids Sea Camp at age 11 and the friendships she formed there still last more than 20 years later. She says it’s not just about learning to dive—it’s about growing confidence, social skills, and a love for the ocean.
“When you see your child happy and doing something that’s healthy, that’s also helping them increase their knowledge and confidence, while also making friends, and then getting to celebrate that together underwater, that whole formula is just a win,” says Kaplan. “That is the magic of Kids Sea Camp.”
Kids Sea Camp didn’t come without roadblocks. Peyton recalls how in the beginning many dive resorts didn’t want the liability of certifying children, but her unwavering determination and extreme care have enabled Kids Sea Camp to certify more than 8,100 youth without a single accident.
“Margo is a force of nature, and she is also willing to take on the risk,” says Jeff Sankoff, MD, an ER physician based in Denver and father of three who has taken his family on nine Kids Sea Camps. “There’s a reason why Margo hasn’t had any incidents or dive problems, because she doesn’t view them as accidents or as unpreventable. She has put a lot of thought into what can happen in diving, and she has been very proactive in making sure that she tries to see all of the potential things that could happen and get in the way of those. I think she’s had 8,000 kids go through Kids Sea Camp with no misfortunes because of all the thought and care she has put into it.”
Peyton’s personal dream is also contributing to larger culture change in the dive industry. When Kids Sea Camp started, only about 33% of PADI dive certifications went to women globally, and less than 10% to youth ages 10 to 19. Today nearly 40% of all PADI certifications go to women, and youth make up 15% of annual certifications. Kids Sea Camp has certified more than 300 youth annually over 25 years, greatly contributing to increasing the number of the next generation of divers.
The impact Peyton has had led to some of the highest industry recognition. Following in Pascal’s footsteps, she has also been inducted into the Woman Divers Hall of Fame, as well as inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame, DEMA Hall Of Fame, and winning a PADI Lifetime Achievement Award.
More Than A Dive Trip: An Experience That Lasts A Lifetime
In a world where we are more plugged in than ever and loneliness is on the rise, Kids Sea Camp may be an antidote for disconnection.
Dr. Sankoff says his three kids have made friendships and stay connected after Kids Sea Camp is over, and the bonding that happens is part of the reason he keeps coming back. “You often go somewhere with your kids, and they’re plugged into their phones,” says Dr. Sankoff. “When we go to Kids Sea Camp, our kids are not generally plugged in. They’re either doing stuff with their friends that they’ve met there, or friends that they’ve met at other trips, because we often see people over and over again. Or they’re spending time with us. The family bonding that we’ve done on these trips has made us very close as a family. To me, that’s the Kids Sea Camp magic.”
Moreover, the dive adventure trips help kids to experience nature with a hands-on learning style. Generally people tend to care more about things they know and can relate to, so Kids Sea Camp is one way to help build the next generation of stewards for the planet.
“We’re also creating a generation of kids who love the ocean, and hopefully, will grow up to become advocates for conservation and ocean protection,” says Kaplan. “they’ve seen a sea turtle up close, or a puffer fish or other marine animals, and they fall in love with those creatures—that connection inspires them to care.”
Dr. Sankoff’s oldest daughter went on her first Kids Sea Camp at 11 and is now 20. She got her dive master certification at Kids Sea Camp in Bonaire last summer, did an internship with Kids Sea Camp, and is now pursuing a career in marine biology.
For Franchini’s part, he says he remembers that first experience of getting certified so vividly that it shaped his life and love of the ocean. Three of the nine Kids Sea Camps he did with his family growing up were at Buddy Dive Camp in Bonaire, where he got his dive master certification. Today Franchini works as a reef restoration technician at Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire, which helps restore damaged coral reefs.
“It’s a serendipitous full-circle moment. I got to see the world through Kids Sea Camp, and it was always inspiring. Some kids wonder about space, but I wondered about the ocean, and what was down there. I now get to experience it in my day-to-day work.
Peyton’s ability to convert naysayers, break down barriers, and drive change in a male-dominated industry and start Kids Sea Camp was game changing not only for herself, but also for the thousands of families who were able to become part of it. Fire might be a strange word to describe an ocean pioneer, but Peyton’s ability to fuel her own fire has made dive culture more inclusive, deepened connections for thousands of families, and created a new generation of ocean stewards at a time when we desperately need them.