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ROMEO AND JULIET: THE DANCE |
During her around-the-world diving career Annie Crawley
worked for a time on a live-aboard in Belize where she had
the rare opportunity to observe a pair of bottlenose
dolphins that had broken away from their pod and taken up
residence at a popular dive site near Lighthouse Reef. The
pair was not always to be found during the vessel's weekly
visits to the reef area. However, Annie and the guests
would sometimes have the good fortune of swimming with the
graceful mammals, for their entire dive. Often, the pair
would playfully interact with the divers, and, unlike most
wild dolphins, showed no aversion to their scuba bubbles.
On occasions, the pair, appearing oblivious to the
presence of divers, engaged in extended courtship and
mating behavior. The male would gently caress his mate's
body and even offer bits of seaweeds as apparent tokens of
his affection. During several dives, Annie captured their
romantic interludes on tape, which she later edited into
Romeo and Juliet: The Dance.
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Annie
Crawley has been part of the dive and travel industry
since becoming an instructor in 1993. Later, in California
she earned her USCG 100-ton captain's license. Skillfully
coupling her diving career and passion for marine
wildlife, she has been able to swim with whale sharks in
Galapagos, track rare marine critters in Indonesia, study
cephalopod behavior in Papua New Guinea, and frolic with
sea lions in California's kelp forest. Annie currently
works in Santa Barbara as a videographer and script
researcher for a natural history production company.
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