Paul Putner Quotes

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.

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

I was into Jacques Cousteau as a kid and started scuba-diving around 14, which blew my mind. It was all colour, another world.

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'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

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

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.

As our technology evolves, we will have the capacity to reach new, ever-increasing depths. The question is what kind of technology, in the end, do we want to deploy in the far reaches of the ocean? Tools of science, ecology and documentation, or the destructive tools of heavy industry?

I was training more learning how to scuba dive which I'd never done which was really, really, really cool.

The Gili Islands gave me some of my best scuba diving experiences, including tons of turtles.

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.

If you ever get a chance to learn how to scuba dive, go do it.

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.

Jacques Cousteau was my hero.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

People don't tend to be unhappy in jobs doing something that they love, so I think it's important that those entering the world of work for the first time are given as much information as possible on how to get into the career that they want.

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

We were shooting in a French island called La Reunion. One of my crew members gifted me free-diving equipment and took me to the waters on my day off. I spotted sharks and species of fish which can't be found elsewhere. It was a very refreshing experience for me.