Edith Widder Quotes

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.

My grandfather was Jacques Cousteau, a pioneer of ocean exploration and the co-inventor of scuba diving. Back in the 1940s when he tested out his invention which allowed humans to swim freely in the ocean with a portable air source for the first time in history, very little of the ocean had been explored let alone captured on film.

There is an enormous amount to be learned about the sea; like most wildernesses, it has great potential.

When I was a child, I saw my father diving to the deepest point in the ocean with the U.S. Navy.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

Like my father and grandfather, Philippe and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I've dedicated my life to exploring and protecting our seas, in large part through documentary film.

I love storytelling, I love being a visual person, and it just made perfect sense to be an underwater photographer and explore the ocean and work with scientists.

I can't think of anything I regret. Everything I've done, I've enjoyed doing. I've had five husbands, four children. I've done it all, but mainly I've enjoyed studying fish and being underwater with them, being in their natural habitat, looking at the fish and the fish looking at me.

As a young boy, I was very interested - as I still am - in all sorts of adventure and exploration. I thought about being an astronaut, a dinosaur scientist, or marine biologist, but I clearly was drawn to the ocean and to the water.

I'm friends with James Cameron. We've spent time together over the years because he is a diver and explorer and in his heart of hearts a biologist. We run into each other at scientific conferences.

Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while.

If we are to be good stewards of the ocean, we need to understand what lives there and how the animals interact with each other and with their environment, which means we need to be constantly seeking new and improved methods for exploration and observation.

The amazing thing about the sea is that it is perhaps the last truly unexplored frontier; most oceanographers estimate that only about ninety-five per cent of the sea has been studied. Meanwhile, the oceans are believed to contain more animals than exist on land, a majority of which have never been discovered.

I have made hundreds of dives in submersibles, with each dive holding the promise of seeing an organism or a behavior that no one has ever seen before. But I have always wondered about the animals and behaviors that we're not seeing because our bright lights and loud thrusters scare them away.

In 2010, there was a TED event called Mission Blue held aboard the Lindblad Explorer in the Galapagos as part of the fulfillment of Sylvia Earle's TED wish. I spoke about a new way of exploring the ocean, one that focuses on attracting animals instead of scaring them away.

Jacques Cousteau was my hero.

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.

We went out and tagged 17 sharks and watched where they went. The data was amazing.

I am an ocean lover and fish watcher and had studied marine biology and even taught marine sciences before I got into animation.

I always thought I would be a marine biologist because I love the sea - but considering the fact that I've always loved acting and the theater, I don't think I ever gave anything else much of a chance.

I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.” Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president.

Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface.

I learned to dive in Belize, which is sort of like learning to drive in an Aston Martin. The reefs and refuges are some of the most dramatic in the world. But the real reason I went was to dive the Blue Hole, a 400 ft. sinkhole near Ambergris Caye. Google it, and you'll see why.

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

If we stop dragging trawls and dredges through it, the life of the seas would recover with astonishing speed. Because most marine animals are highly mobile during at least one stage of their development, the rewilding of the seas needs little help from humans.