Dive Into Your Imagination

What happens when you think about a dolphin? Try it for a moment and see how you feel. We connect with Ocean animals, just like our children do. Mention the word shark around a little boy and see what happens! If we partner messages of the Ocean, together with imagination and environmental education, we change the way the next generation lives. Our children may only be 40% of our population, but they are 100% of our future.

I spent the month of November in Palau thank you to Sam’s Tours and Continental! Oh my gosh, we had mantas, sharks, nesting triggerfish, snowing pyramid butterfly fish and HUGE Napoleon Wrasse. While I was there, I worked together with General Manager of Sam’s Tours, Dermot Keane, who introduced me to and helped me secure an interview with President Johnson Toribiong. As President of an island nation, he realizes his main mission is to conserve Palau’s resources to protect the marine environment, promote tourism while protecting Palau’s food sources. We can all learn from his messages. President Toribiong is an international environmental leader, in September 2009, before the UN, he declared Palau a shark sanctuary, the first of it’s kind, and also has protected dolphins, dugongs and whales in Palau waters. Since then, other countries from Honduras to Indonesia have been setting aside resources for shark sanctuaries. There are many organizations working together from the Palau Shark Santuary to Shark Savers to promote the health of our Ocean. During President Toribiong’s interview he also shared with us his plans to veto a bill that would have opened up fishing for Napoleon Wrasse, an endangered species. Since this time he has vetoed this bill to protect the species for future generations. In the President’s words, “We need to raise our children to love the Oceans and the marine environment. If it is not protected we may lose forever the beauty and resourcefulness of the Ocean and the next generation may never enjoy it as we did. The young children learn better and develop core values, which can be used in their adult life to change the world! We must raise the next generation to respect and love the sea.”

Many of us know more about our limitations than about our imagination and what is possible in our own lives. Today I would like to share a story and leave you with a few ideas to explode your own imagination. My work is a lifelong journey and passion as I have a love affair with water because it makes me feel so free and because you are reading this, we get to experience this journey together. Let me be your inspiration. This photograph gives you a glimpse of the backyard in Chicago where I grew up and the very first swimming pool I knew. On hot summer days we played carefree for hours in a sprinkler. I didn’t get to experience the Ocean or own a camera until college and would have never dreamed I would create a company dedicated to changing the way the next generation views the Ocean. You create your life through your thoughts, words and actions. Many of us get in the way of our selves and cannot even imagine another reality because of the voices in our minds.

As children, we were often taught to color inside the lines and hear the word no thousands of times before reaching school. In order to tap into my imagination, I have had to first realize the power within. You have greatness inside of you too. In order for me to tap into my power, I have found I need to get still. We have to have the courage and the skills to learn through the stillness inside, which allows another part of you to emerge. I find stillness in the beauty of the Ocean, diving with dolphins. The Ocean taught me the unbelievable is real. I am proud to release Explore Coral Reefs and Dive Into California. These two DVDS for kids aged Pre K to 3rd grade are like nothing you have seen before and have come from the power of imagination and a lot of hard work! I encourage you to give the gift of the Ocean because you may change a child’s life, just like the Ocean changed mine. Order yours today! This is only the beginning as books, lesson plans and more DVDs will be launching in 2011! The past three months have been a whirlpool of activity. August in Galapagos aboard the Galapagos Sky (See the video here), Belize in September, Speaking in Chicago during October and November in Palau! Right now it is 4:17 am, I am jet lagged and dreaming of this morning’s dives! I will be exploring Palau this month and diving with Sam’s Tours.

***Special alert!  I am heading to the Galapagos from August 5th until September 6th.  I will be on an expedition, but there are still a few spots available.  If you are interested in joining me in the Darwin Arch Club to scuba dive or snorkel with whale sharks for one of four weeks, please contact me as soon as possible at annie@anniecrawley.com *** After several months of development I am launching my new website specifically to highlight and promote the speaking side of my business.  Please help us celebrate by visiting www.AnnieCrawley.com and considering me for your next conference, event, keynote speaker or school presentation.  Please take a moment to let me know what you think!  I would like to thank my colleagues who helped make this site possible: Richard Salas for an unbelievable studio session to get professional images and Taylor Reaume of The Search Engine Pros who is an internet guru.  This week I am attending the National Marine Educators Association Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and it has been four days of action packed learning, networking and fun.  Surrounded by educators from across the nation being represented by teachers, professors, Aquarium Education Departments, NGO’s and corporations setting the pace for the future in Ocean and Great Lake Education to be incorporated into K-12 curriculum.  Last night we were treated to an unbelievable experience at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Aquarium of the Smokies.  They have tunnels so you can get a birds eye view and actually get behind the animals within the exhibits.  We also danced to an unbelievable band, The Chill Billies underneath a quote by Jules Verne, speaking as Captain Nemo, “The Sea is a vast reservoir of nature.  It was through the sea that the earth so to speak began…”   And so I joined the Ocean Literacy Committee in the NMEA who has been lobbying to get Ocean Literacy into the national standards of education.  This next round will determine what teachers will need to teach for the next 15 years so it is imperative we let our voices be heard for the need of Ocean Literacy in the classroom.  Dive Into Your Imagination lesson plans for Pre K through K and First to Third Grades will be releasing in late 2010.  These and our new adventures of Ocean Annie Books have been partially funded by a grant from Save Our Seas so we are very excited to have them meet national and international standards!  As I write this, we are getting ready to hear from our keynote speaker, Shark Lady Dr. Eugenie Clark, who told me one of her favorite experiences was scuba diving with whale sharks for the first time!  And I could totally relate because my life changed during the summer of 2001 when I dived with whale sharks for the first time in my life.  Here are a few highlights from Dr. Eugenie Clark’s keynote speech.  I wanted to bring you here with me to learn a few of the reasons she was awarded the NMEA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

"To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything."  Anatole France
 
Tens of thousands of people are afraid to put their face in the water and many more just do not like it. Fears drive us and many people have a complete disconnection with the Ocean because they are afraid of it and can not relate.  My sister falls into the second category, she does not like putting her face in the water, yet when she became a mom she made a vow not to instill her fears into her children.  I believe that many of us are frozen in fear and our role models often base their decisions on their fears that they unknowingly pass onto us.  And then decision makers and government officials often play upon the fears of the masses and use it as a means of control.  Can you remember a time in the past 9 years that you have not flown without being advised of an orange alert?  We tend to ignore the messages after we hear them too often and yet accept things because we feel powerless over change.  How many of you have started tuning out what is happening in the Gulf because of a variety of reasons from helplessness to disbelief to how can we possibly wean ourselves off of oil to oh my gosh, when are they going to stop it?  Just tell me when it is over.

We know we are dependent on oil and that there are alternative energies available, but right now if we switch there will be costs associated with it.  How can we think of spending more money when we are suffering an economic crisis, yet how can we not?  The dollar amount is ticking, the latest number published was the clean-up effort is already at 2.5 billion dollars.  We need a mind-shift to happen at all levels of our society.  When I first visited my sister and family in Australia 8 years ago, Hannah Rose was 2 and she had no fear of water.  I photographed and videotaped Hannah and she was one of the first children to be featured in our DVDs.  As a matter of fact Hannah and all of my other nieces and nephews are the reason I created Dive Into Your Imagination to change the way a new generation views the Ocean and themselves.  You see, we as adults just have completely missed the plot in getting government and corporations to embrace our environment.  We are all connected.  Last week I was able to take Hannah on her first scuba diving pool experience.  Their family is visiting the states and I wanted to give the gift of breathing underwater to Hannah and her father because of the great impact her birth had on my professional life.  My sister still does not enjoy putting her head underwater, but her daughters are mermaids.  As we explored Seattle together, we walked through the Science Center gardens and I came upon this glass statue of words.  I love words, sayings and quotes and this summed up my feelings about what is happening in our world, “To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.”  Anatole France