The Perks of Swimming: From education, safety, and a great workout

Why is it important to learn how to swim? Swimming is a great workout, with added health benefits as well. According to Discovery Health & Fit, there are other great benefits that come from swimming, like the prevention of diabetes, and an improved sense of flexibility, because the body works a lot of muscles at once. Swimming is also one of the best ways to help with weight control and loss, since it's the highest calorie burner. Bucknell University lists the social, psychological, and physical benefits of swimming, as well as some different ways that you can workout in the pool.
Aside from working out though, what's the big deal about swimming? It can save your life. The American Red Cross offers courses all over the country for lifeguards, lifeguard instructor, and water safety instruction (WSI certification), as well as swim lessons. There are also classes to take on how to be safe in a home pool. A reporter for the BBC UK talks about her experiences swimming and how it impacted her life, while including facts about swimming in English children, like how many can't swim 25 meters in a pool (200,000 by the age of 11, as of May 2012).
PBS Kids Go! encourages kids to get into a swimming habit, because of how good it is for the body. They have games, videos, celebrities who encourage it, and other methods to help get kids excited to swim. There is also an educational aspect with job opportunities that cane come from being able to swim. For one thing, there happens to be a whole specialization of archaeology that has to do with underwater ruins. Port Royal, a hub founded in 1518 for commerce, where pirates and privateers were able to reside safely, is one of these ruins, though it can be difficult to get permission to go diving near the site, as special permission is required from the Jamaican Government. Other interesting underwater ruins can be seen here or here.
As my friend Dominique likes to say about swimming, "It gives you the opportunity to be safe around the water, and the ability to help someone else be safe and enjoy the water as well."

This video was made and edited by me, and I asked friends, my lifeguard coworkers, and some family why they thought swimming was important. It's a great skill to have that, as one of my coworkers Sean says "I think swimming is important because it's a skill that can save your life one day."