Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I studied marine biology, even taught marine science before I got into animation, so I had an interest in that field and those animals.

I like underwater life.

A marine ecologist is a scientist who studies the many species that live underwater and how they interact with each other and with humans.

I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was growing up and always wanted to be surrounded by wildlife.

I filmed underwater for two days in the open ocean with dolphins.

When I was little I had this notion of being a marine biologist. I grew up by the ocean so I was always in the water but realistically, I don't think I would make the best marine biologist.

I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school.

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.

I think the concept of the sea is very important.

I grew up down in Florida, and in the Keys, there's this place called Sea Camp which was not unlike Space Camp, except you explored the sea. And so that kind of whetted my appetite for that. But then I ended up swimming in a lagoon full of Cassiopeia jellyfish, and that quickly quashed that desire to be a marine biologist.

Nobody can legitimately claim to be a marine ecologist and conservationist while continuing to eat fish. It is the ultimate form of hypocrisy.

I just kind of figured that the marine biology would be a career, and the art would be something I did for my own self-expression.

Everybody's got some fascination with undersea life, don't you think?

When I was younger, I wanted to be a marine biologist, among other things.

In the spring of 1996, I was working for Nickelodeon on a show called 'Rocko's Modern Life,' and I was interested at the time in doing a show about the ocean, an undersea show.

Marine biology was something I was into during high school and the beginning of college.

I suppose the marine biology was a post-teen thing. I was kind of on my way but I was one of those teenage boys who got to 13, 14 and had no idea what I was going to do. I liked natural history. I liked the outdoors. And I found the sea quite interesting.

When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was my hero and the person who inspired me to become an underwater explorer. I have many other people who inspired me after him, but he is still my all-time hero.

I have been blessed to realize my dream of becoming an underwater photojournalist, but with that, I feel an obligation and sense of urgency to share what I have seen with others.

The corals do not look much worn, but still appear to have been dead. There are some delicate shells of molluscs from depths beyond 500 fathoms, where they were certainly living.

On my second swim at Deception Island, the water was very clear and I was looking at hundreds of whale bones beneath me. It was a graveyard from the whaling some time in the 1920s-30s.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

It was great. I mean, it's a blast directing underwater stuff.

The first time I ever had the opportunity to dive on the Great Barrier Reef, it was while filming 'Oceans Deadliest' with Steve Irwin. I remember just how awestruck I was by its beauty.

A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.