Sylvia Earle Quotes

The thing I love about diving is the flowing feeling. I like a sport where the whole point is to move as little as humanly possible so your air supply will last longer. That's my kind of sport. Where the amount of effort spent is absolutely minimal.

My first breath was just...it just seemed impossible that you could actually breathe underwater. I knew in my mind it was possible, but actually experiencing it was such a gulp of joy and I feel it every time I go under the ocean. I love doing it, to be able to feel weightless, to spin on one finger, to do somersaults, to be like a graceful ballerina - even with a huge tank on your back you can do the most extraordinary things.

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

All in all, the dives I made in Fiordland were some of the best I've ever made.

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 long as there's a body of water nearby, I'm happy. Pools don't count. I like diving into the ocean and coming out refreshed.

My favourite thing to do on this planet is to scuba dive.

I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It's just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.

One of the sports I do - my wife thinks I'm nuts - is open-water spear fishing, what we call blue-water hunting. We get in a boat, and we go offshore, normally about 30 miles. So when you jump off the boat, there are no reefs, and the bottom is no longer fifty or a hundred feet: it's thousands of feet. It's sort of like being in outer space.

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

If I didn't travel so much, maybe my perfect Sunday would be skin diving on a coral reef - not scuba diving, as skin diving is more physical, and I prefer the lightness of it. Skin diving means wearing just goggles. Oh, I could wear some trunks, maybe.

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.

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.

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.

I don't have to tell you folks about scuba diving. So, that'll save some time.

In the course of time I have learned to tramp about coral reefs, twenty to thirty feet under water, so unconcernedly that I can pay attention to particular definite things. But after all my silly fears have been allayed, even now, with eyes overflowing with surfeit of color, I am still almost inarticulate. We need a whole new vocabulary, new adjectives, adequately to describe the designs and colors of under sea.

I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

I've always loved scuba diving and the cell-tickling feel of being underwater, though it poses unique frustrations. Alone, but with others, you may share the same sights and feelings, but you can't communicate well.

Everyone loves to fly, and flying underwater is even better than flying in air because there are things around you.

I look really good in a scuba suit.

'Changes in Latitudes' began when I was looking at a photograph of a sea turtle swimming underwater. I had such a strong feeling for the beauty of this ancient creature, at home in the sea. On the spot, I wanted to swim with that turtle. I began to imagine a character who would do just that.

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.

I just learned how to scuba dive. I'd been scared to rely on one little air hose for oxygen, but swimming with all those fish is exhilarating.

Belize suits me because I'm active and I like diving. I learnt when I was 18, in Thailand, and I have dived in Vietnam, which wasn't great, the Red Sea, which was incredible and reasonably priced, and then the Maldives, which is like being submerged in an aquarium.

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.