Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes

I've swam with great white sharks.

I've seen sharks in the ocean, it hasn't made me get out of the ocean; that's for sure.

The Oceanic White Tip is considered one of the most dangerous sharks in the sea along with the Great White and Tiger. It is responsible for some of the most famous episodes of man-eating in history, such as when the U.S.S. Indianapolis sank in 1945.

Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you're more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!

Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks.

Turns out, I couldn't catch them - or even get close to them. I realized that sharks are amazing, beautiful animals who have absolutely no interest in checking me out.

I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine.

People come to me and say, 'What'll I do if I go in the water and see a shark?' You don't have to do anything. The chances of that shark attacking you in any way is so remote. The sea should be enjoyed, the animals in it. When you see a shark underwater, you should say, 'How lucky I am to see this beautiful animal in his environment!'

Sharks freak me out.

I'm obsessed with great white sharks. And I want to dive into the coral of the Great Barrier Reef.

People don't need to be scared. I tickle sharks. I do, when they swim by.

For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

Most people catch them breaching from the surface when they're shooting out of the water. I have them breaching from underwater in a 16-time sequence, a shark leaving the water and then reentering the water.

Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don't.

I swam with my first shark in the 1980s. I was 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, working with a group of marine scientists. Late in the day, a 5-foot long blue shark swam into our chum slick. For the next hour, I marveled at the animal's stunning indigo color and the elegant way she moved effortlessly through the sea.

I think great whites are the most beautiful and perfect creatures I've ever seen.

Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.

I spent three weeks on a converted shrimp trawler with 17 people, two toilets, and one shower, all the while diving every day with very active sharks.

I've always admired sharks because they have a dimension of intelligence that is somewhat unique to that animal, and especially a great white. A great white has this organ called an ampullae of Lorenzini, and it can actually sense electromagnetic disturbances.

On Cape Cod, great white shark stocks have been growing, or at least becoming more concentrated, because of the multiplying numbers of seals around Monomoy Island. We are fortunate to have such abundance of these sharks in our own waters. Around the globe, we are killing in excess of 100 million sharks each year.

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment.

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

Sharks don't particularly have a great interest in divers. It seemed that in a normal dive, I would jump in the water, and one or two gray reef sharks would swim in and kind of check me out - and then they would keep their distance. So they weren't particularly threatening or anything to be afraid of.

Sharks will scare me. I went out to Malibu a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful, clear day, out in five feet of water, going to surf, and there was this big ol' freakin' leopard shark... I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, 'OK, he won't hurt me.'