I was chatting to some friends and I realized it was quite unusual that I learned how to swim in the ocean, not swimming pools or fresh water. So I thought a poll was in order:
I’ve found that out as well, MrDibble.
I learned to swim at New Smyrna Beach, FL, which is also a shark nursery. I’m quite certain my mom didn’t know this at the time (we’d just moved there). Right, mom? Uh, mom?
What I do in water barely qualifies as swimming, but I learned it after my uncle threw me in a lake in Florida.
He believed in the sink or swim method. I guess it sort of worked since I didn’t drown, but I’m not very good at it.
My grandparents had a small piece of property on the Magothy River in Maryland. We were there pretty much every summer Sunday of my childhood. I never learned to really swim, but I am comfortable in the water, and I can propel myself thru the water without needing flotation devices.
When I was in the Navy, I went thru survival swim training, but it wasn’t so much about technique as endurance - I swam a mile doing a modified back stroke. It took me an hour, but I got there. It helped that I’m very buoyant… 
I lived by the sea, in a country full of lakes and rivers, with a public swimming pool freely available to all in the area. We had mandatory swimming lessons at my school.
I can’t swim.
My option isn’t available: I learned to swim in Southold Bay and Long Island Sound. Saltwater, but not the ocean.
Lived in Erie, PA as a little kid, but don’t recall ever swimming in the big lake. My parents made me and my sibs take swimming lessons at a local school from an early age to help ensure that we would not become a sad drowning statistic. I still can’t do a crawl stroke worth a damn, but I can make forward progress using side or back strokes, and I can tread water or float as needed.
YMCA as a young kid, to the best of my recollection. We didn’t live close to any large bodies of water.
The ocean (as opposed to an ocean) covers all the interconnected salt water on the planet’s surface. I’ll only accept Dead Sea/Caspian Sea/Aral Sea etc. as not being covered by that (and anyone who learned to swim in the Dead Sea gets extra cool points!). Bays and sounds are still part of the ocean, though. I’m not meaning the open ocean, there (I learned in Langebaan Lagoon, for instance)
I first learned to “doggie paddle” in the pond not far from my house. It wasn’t an artificial swimming pool. On the other hand, it wasn’t completely natural , either. It was basically a pit left over from 50-100 years earlier when they dug clay out of the ground there vfor making sun-dried bricks (I later excavated in the area, and found some of the old brick molds).
I had more formal and extensive swimming lessons in the big indoor swimming pool at the YMCA. i also had Boy Scout Lifesaving lessons there.
Later on, I did a lot of swimming at Boy scout camp, including the Mile Swim. That lake, too, wasn’t completely natural – it was formed by damming the river. There were still tree stumps you had to watch out for when you were boating on the lake.
I did most of my childhood swimming in pools or the ocean. The ocean was arguably the only completely natural body of water I swam in as a kid.
My parents’ kitchen sink, as a toddler. No joke. Since the OP didn’t put in a NOTA option, I didn’t vote.
Lake Michigan, to be precise.
The Hudson River. North of Albany, NY, but south of Fort Edward, NY, where General Electric dumped PCB’s.
Pelican Lake, in Ashby, MN. Dad taught my sister and I how to swim by basically pushing us off the dock. Once we quit flailing and learned to float, then he actually taught us how to do the crawl and back stroke. I took to it easily, my sister did not. However, I hate swimming in lakes due to weeds and bitey things. Give her a flotation device, and she’d spend all day in the lake.
I went “can’t swim” although I will admit that the two times I needed to to rescue my sorry ass, I managed. I did enough playing and floating around assorted natural sources as a kid I guess I just managed the basics even if I didn’t actually practice the craft.
Swimming pool and rather late. I think I was 9 or 10.
The thing is, I was scared of swimming without one of those foam kickboards.
When I was in 4th grade in primary school, my teacher looked at me and said: “Get into the water!”. He held a long metal pole about a meter before me and started walking along the edge of the pool. I followed him until we reached our starting point again. “Now you can swim”, he said.
Swimming, the only sport that can save your life.
Every parent should insure that their children learn how to swim.
This was my experience, precisely.
One of the things I like about MIT is that you have to prove the ability to at least stay afloat for a period of time, is not actually swim, before you graduate.
I used my Boy Scout training to show I could swim and stay afloat even fully clothed in my first week there, to qualify for their Small Boats certification.
My mom can’t swim and is afraid of boats and deep water. As a result, she was determined that her kids would learn to swim at an early age. I started taking swimming lessons at the age of five at a public swimming pool, which continued pretty much every summer of my youth until I was eight or nine. When I was in the Boy Scouts I earned the Lifesaving merit badge, which required additional classes at the public pool.
Thanks Mom.