Jill Heinerth is a Canadian cave diver, underwater explorer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She is a veteran of over thirty years of filming, photography, and exploration on projects in submerged caves around the world. She has made TV series, consulted on movies, written several books and is a frequent corporate keynote speaker. Jill is the first Explorer in Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, recipient of Canada’s prestigious Polar Medal and is a Fellow of the International Scuba Divers Hall of Fame. In recognition of her lifetime achievement, Jill was awarded the Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration from the RCGS and the William Beebe Award from the Explorers Club.“It's interesting because I'm an artist, a citizen scientist. I think of myself primarily as an artist, where many scientists that I work with are very pure applied scientists. And so when you are working for an academic institution, there's a very strict sort of chain of events, and protocols for observation, research, and writing for a peer review publication takes a long time. And at each step of the way that peer applied scientist needs to be quite specific and careful with their language. So they're not saying anything that can't be immediately and fully defended otherwise they might harm their reputation. Where an artist is really encouraged to sort of paint and imagine and just throw crazy ideas out there and brainstorm. So we might say things that are like, ‘Oh my gosh, did you see that skull? It's got silver teeth on it. Gee, I wonder if they were hiding their valuables inside this skull? Or whether that was a decorative application or whatever?’ So we could throw out these crazy ideas, and the scientist is constantly going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's wait. We need to get evidence, research... And so we kind of temper each other in that yin-yang sort of way. But I would propose the planet doesn't have time for some of that traditional science anymore, and we need to put a little bit more effort into involving artists and citizen scientists in contributing to that data stream and the idea stream that can be synthesized into solving some of the planet's greatest issues right now, like water issues and climate change.”www.intotheplanet.comwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast