26 years of connecting families to the ocean — and to each other.

We are Kids Sea Camp & Family Dive Adventures, founded by Margo Peyton and built over nearly two decades alongside her husband and vice president, Tom Peyton. What began as a note on a beach-bar napkin 27 years ago became a simple idea the dive industry hadn’t yet made room for: kids and adults of every age learning and diving together, becoming better divers, and meeting other families who love the ocean.

In 2000, that idea left the napkin. Seven families and one resort in Curaçao. Twenty-seven years later, it is a living classroom that travels the world—Indonesia, the Philippines, the Galápagos, St. Eustatius, Fiji, Palau, Belize, Bonaire, Roatán, the Cayman Islands, St. Lucia, and beyond. Three generations often share the same week. Parents who once arrived with small children now return as grandparents. Kids who learned to dive with us have grown up, earned their own certifications, and brought their own children.

Margo grew up on Cape Cod, daughter of a captain and a 1950s diver; she spent more than three decades as a travel professional and ocean advocate before she ever named the company. As a single mother, she saw the gap clearly: beautiful dive trips existed, but almost none were built for children. Resorts wanted the easy adult diver. Families were left behind. She set out to create what did not exist, choosing PADI as the standard and personally selecting five-star, family-run resorts she would trust with her own kids, Robbie and Jennifer.

Tom joined that mission fully. A PADI Divemaster, writer, designer, and former newspaper editor, he brought music, sports, culinary weeks, and a gift for making a boat full of strangers feel like a reunion by Tuesday. In 2020, PADI honored them both with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Margo has since been inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame and the Women Divers Hall of Fame, and has received DEMA’s Reaching Out Award, induction into the DEMA Hall of Fame, and honors from Beneath the Sea, the Family Travel Association, and Scuba Diving Magazine. Readers of Scuba Diving Magazine have voted Kids Sea Camp #1 in Family Dive Travel. The awards matter because they name what families already knew: this work helped open the family market for the whole industry.

Together, they also co-founded Ocean Wishes, the nonprofit that funds training grants, youth education, and coral restoration. So the next generation doesn’t just visit the ocean, but learns to protect it.

Family safety is first. Education and fun follow close behind. Since 2000, Kids Sea Camp has issued more than 8,100 youth diver certifications —  with zero dive accidents. That record is not luck.

We call it the Mom Factor. Margo is a mother first, and that perspective shapes every ratio, every site choice, and every resort we place a child in. We keep ratios conservative. Dedicated Kids Sea Camp instructors stay with your child’s group for the week, so the face in the water on Monday is the same face on Friday. We partner only with PADI operators. Waivers are part of diving; they don’t relieve us of our moral obligation to keep kids safe.

You can book a resort and a dive shop yourself. Many people do. You can’t easily recreate the needs we know you have, the expectations we meet, and the detail we bring to every trip, refined over 26 years. We provide the logistics, kid-specific gear, kid-friendly instructors, course materials, private boats for young divers, and family activities and programs. Parents can dive while children enjoy diving and training with other kids, or learn about the ocean through fun activities with others in their age group. train — or the whole family can be in the water together as buddy teams. Non-divers are not left at the pool; trips can include kayaking, hiking, fly fishing, volleyball, cultural tours, citizen science, and the kind of dockside music that turns a shy teenager into someone who will sing. We welcome special needs with notice and the right support. Empty-nester weeks and custom Family Dive Adventures trips exist for parents and grandparents who aren’t ready to give this up.

We listen before we recommend a destination. We ask about ages, experience, fears, medical notes, and what “a good week” actually means to your family. Then we tell you the truth about where you will thrive — and where you will not. About 75 percent of our families return. Many have been returning for a decade or more. They do not come back for a logo. They come back because the people on the boat became their people. Travel once, and you join a worldwide network of diving families. Travel again, and you walk into a reunion

After 26 years, the stories are the real catalog

Charlie, who started at 12, wrote that those weeks shaped his life “not just as a diver, but as a person,” and that watching his once-anxious mother learn, at her own pace, to love diving beside him is a gift that outlasted the trip. A single father told us the weeks gave his children friends across the country and a global view they still carry. Dan and Betty Orr called the vacations “expertly run and very safe.” Others describe the feeling as an extended family — “give them a week, and they will remember forever.”

Tom likes to say it is not just about diving. He calls the feeling the KSC magic.

Margo calls the people a tribe. Families call it home.

Kids Sea Camp weeks for ages 4 to 17, from Bubblemaker and SASY through Seal Team, Junior Open Water, and advanced training, hosted by Tom, Margo, and a longtime team of PADI professionals. Family Dive Adventures for custom trips any time of year. Empty Nester Adventures for the parents who grew up in this community. Private boats, kid gear included, courses for those who want them, and resorts chosen because they are family-run and family-ready. Conservation built into the week, not added as an afterthought.

The journey is the trust. The trust is the experience. The experience is why they come back.