Ashlan Gorse Cousteau Quotes

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 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've swam with great white sharks.

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!'

Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't.

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

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

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.

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 want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.

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.

Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.

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've been diving for about 30 years, and I can honestly say that I've had some amazing encounters with sharks, squids, and other whales. But the encounter with the right whales in the Auckland Islands was probably the best thing I've ever done. It was just that amazing.

I love the ocean; growing up around Laguna Beach, I spent my summers surfing, diving, and snorkeling.

For decades I have tried to peel back the layers of mystery surrounding many marine creatures, though most have held tightly to their secrets. One animal that keeps me pondering is the shark. Spellbound by these enigmatic animals since I first encountered them in New England, I never tire of watching their special blend of power and grace.

Being able to breathe underwater would be sweet. There is so much life underneath the water that we don't know about. I would love to check out the bottom of the ocean to see what's going on down there.

The earliest memories I have of the ocean are actually stories - stories from my grandfather, the legendary ocean explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau. My passion for ocean conservation stems from learning at a very young age that we're all connected; we're all in this together.

The Bahamas has mangrove nurseries, coral reefs, shallow sea grass beds, and deep oceanic trenches - all perfect ecosystems for sharks. Photographing multiple shark species in exquisite water was the assignment I had dreamed about from the start.

I want to stay in the ocean. I'm not going to be able to do that from some holding cell in Japan.

I had wanted to place the Eye-in-the-Sea at an oasis on the bottom of the ocean, in some site rich with life that was likely to be patrolled by large predators. The first time I got to test the camera at such a place was in 2004, in the north end of the Gulf of Mexico, at an amazing location called the brine pool.

A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa. Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me.

People love the ocean. People are always asking me why I don't study the ocean, because, after all, I live in Hawaii. I tell them that it's because the ocean is a lonely, empty place.

I really have a passion for the sea, so I think it's important that whatever I do, I want to be near the sea.