It began out with a easy seed her father planted as Margo Peyton grew up exploring the waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. From her father’s fishing boat, she realized find out how to swim, befriended marine life a lot bigger than herself, and her love for all the things ocean grew. Margo was equally captivated with journey and mixed these loves whereas residing in Grand Cayman for a few years.
As a single mother within the journey trade, she didn’t wish to depart her children behind whereas she continued to discover the world, topside and underwater.
“There have to be different dive vacationers that really feel the identical manner,” she thought.
Seal Crew and Junior Open Water Diver programs have been simply getting off the bottom at PADI, and Margo embraced the concept of children studying at their very own tempo with age-appropriate packages. These participating children packages then freed up their dad and mom to be out on dive boats, making new associates of their very own.
Margo sought out PADI 5 Star Dive Resorts open to the concept of making a brand new kind of week – every week the place children might study to breathe underwater in a secure, enjoyable surroundings and revel in all the things else that made Caribbean islands distinctive. Earlier than lengthy, Youngsters Sea Camp was formally underway.
Margo reminisces, “Beginning with simply six households in Curacao in 2,000, I started to think about how we might create one-of-a-kind adventures for households world wide. Yearly, we added weeks with fastidiously deliberate itineraries, the place children together with their 60 to 80-year-old grandparents might share every week they might keep in mind without end.”
How Did the Dive Trade React?
Alongside the best way, there was skepticism about mixing kids with diving, and households taking on a historically male dominated sport. However along with supportive trade companions, kids’s tools and wetsuits have been manufactured at SCUBAPRO, and underwater cameras have been put of their little palms by SeaLife. Dive magazines launched the idea in print, and inspired households to hitch in. Divers who had given up their carefree days of dive journey after they acquired married, purchased homes and had infants, now had one thing to consider!
As divers responded with curiosity, Margo added new PADI 5 Star Dive Resorts and liveaboards, with security at all times coming first. She personally dedicated herself to all of the PADI coaching she might get, and have become a PADI Grasp Scuba Diver Coach and achieved photographer alongside the best way.
How Has Youngsters Sea Camp Advanced Over Time?
“I wished to make it possible for along with dive coaching, all our households take away vital classes concerning the reefs and marine life, and find out how to shield them for future generations. By together with PADI AWARE studying supplies, scheduling seashore clean-ups, and night talks about all the things from lionfish searching to shark safety, younger and previous minds alike speak in confidence to new methods of fascinated by what it means to be a accountable diver.
We even have a thriving Ocean Needs Basis that is devoted to selling, defending, and preserving our underwater world for future generations. We sponsor starting PADI coaching grants for teenagers, marine life safety efforts, and reef restoration actions world wide. So pondering not solely of our kids’s future, however defending it for his or her kids’s kids is vital to us,” advises Margo.
The Affect of Youngsters Sea Camp
Reflecting on a current expertise, Margo shared how years of operating Youngsters Sea Camp packages left a long-lasting affect she hadn’t totally appreciated till lately. “I’ve at all times been so targeted on making that day, that week, that yr the most effective it might probably be,” she stated, noting she hardly ever paused to contemplate how these early experiences may affect younger divers’ lives.
That modified when, whereas in Grand Cayman for her induction into the Worldwide Scuba Diving Corridor of Fame (see under), she visited the acquainted Cobalt Coast Resort and Divetech, the place she’d hosted many Youngsters Sea Camp weeks. On the dive store, she met a younger man named Kameron, who listened as she recounted her years of bringing households there. Then Kameron shared a stunning connection. As an area boy, he’d watched the teams of younger campers on the identical dock and remembered her sharing further masks and fins with the native children. Smiling, Kameron revealed he was a type of kids and that her generosity had impressed him to pursue diving as a profession.
Now a PADI Teacher, Kameron works at Dive Tech – the place he as soon as performed as a toddler – and stood on stage the next night time, alongside Margo, as each MC and Native Rising Honoree. Taking within the second, Margo stated, “I spotted what I got down to do 25 years in the past has had extra far-reaching results than I might have ever imagined.”
In 2024, Margo Peyton was inducted into the Worldwide Scuba Diving Corridor of Fame, a becoming honor alongside her PADI Lifetime Achievement Award, DEMA’s Reaching Out Award, and membership within the Girls Divers Corridor of Fame. By Youngsters Sea Camp, she’s licensed over 8,000 younger divers and launched numerous households to the underwater world in 15 nations.
Margo’s journey reveals that small, on a regular basis acts of kindness can ripple out and create a wave of inspiration. As divers, every of us has the possibility to spark marvel in others, one dive buddy, one pupil, and one little one at a time.
By Carolyn Pascal
