No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.
I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.
People protect what they love.
With earth’s burgeoning human population to feed we must turn to the sea with understanding and new technology. We need to farm it as we farm the land.
We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about – farming replacing hunting.
The reason I love the sea I cannot explain – it’s physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It’s a liberation of your weight.
We must go and see for ourselves.
If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.
The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.
If human civilization is going to invade the waters of the earth, then let it be first of all to carry a message of respect.
What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.
I wake up saying, I’m still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.
A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it.
Sometime we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.
When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.
All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.
We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope.