As a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer and PADI Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Margo has pioneered the market for family dive training and travel.

In 2000, Margo was researching a way to share her love and diving passion with her own kids. But she struggled to find any family-friendly dive resorts that catered to families. That’s when she decided to launch Family Dive Adventures and Kids Sea Camp to meet other families, build shared memories and dive together. In essence, Kids Sea Camp started with just seven families from this concept scribbled on a beach-bar napkin. Today, the program has expanded to host over 500 families annually, traveling globally for 25 weeks each year. This impressive growth is a testament to Kids Sea Camp’s significant role in promoting diving as a family activity.

Peyton’s vision and determination advanced the landscape of family dive travel by vetting quality, safety and implementing many international logistics to bring together kids of all ages and adults to learn to dive, become better divers and care for the ocean. As a result, more than 7,000 children of all abilities have become certified divers through her programs under Family Dive Adventures & Kids Sea Camp and (501c) Ocean Wishes.

Since 1993, John has leveraged his publishing background to build an umbrella of multi-media organizations to promote diving and conservation. His mission has been to address marine conservation issues while advancing the dive industry. While at times they are mutually exclusive, John sees these two activities as symbiotic.

As the visionary CEO of the largest and the longest-running Singapore-based dive trade expo in Asia (ADEX), John treats his trade and consumer dive show like he does his three magazines: It’s all about the content – featuring conservation front and center. Each annual show is dedicated to a conservation theme such as climate change, plastic solutions, coral reefs, dolphins, whale sharks, turtles, mantas or sea horses.

Using his international and regional connections, John has successfully grown the show to encompass all major diving areas of Asia – including creating trade shows in China, India, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Indonesia. With thousands of speakers and industry partners, these trade shows are a gathering point for millions of divers where dive travel is still in its infancy.

John’s perspective has driven the AGM (Asia Geographic Media) group to earn countless awards including Publisher of the Year and Media Company of the Year. The magazine was also the official magazine of the PADI Diving Society Asia-Pacific from 2006-2009. 

Since 2008, Enric Sala has led the Pristine Seas Initiative – a project focused on exploring, documenting, and protecting the last ‘wild’ places in the oceans.

With a small team of less than thirty people based in Washington, DC and other sites around the world, Pristine Seas has completed 31 expeditions, published more than 90 scientific papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and produced 28 documentary films.

As a result, using a combination of expeditions, science, media and policy analysis, the Pristine Seas team has inspired the protection of 22 marine protected areas covering more than 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean.

Sala’s research not only shows the human impacts in the ocean, but it also shows how marine ecosystems can recover and develops practical solutions to improve the health of our oceans.

Enric is also a former professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and now a full-time conservationist as a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence