SCUBA DIVING QUOTES
quotations about scuba diving
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.
JAMES CAMERON
"James Cameron on Earth's Deepest Spot: Desolate, Lunar-Like", National Geographic, March 26, 2012
SCUBA diving is sensual. To breathe underwater is one of the most fascinating and peculiar sensations imaginable. Breathing becomes a rhythmic melody of inhalations and exhalations. The cracks and pops of fish and crustaceans harmonize with the rhythmic chiming of the bubbles as you exhale. Soon, lungs act as bellows, controlling your buoyancy as you achieve weightlessness. And, as in your dreams, you are flying. Combine these otherworldly stimuli and you surrender completely to the sanctuary of the underwater world.
TEC CLARK
foreword, Scuba Diving
Scuba diving, from the beginning, had an air of dangerous allure. Every landlocked schoolboy knew of its intriguing hazards: the bends, which caused a diver's veins to fizz with carbonated blood until he died a ghastly, percolating death; and rapture of the deep, which took away his reason, filled his heart with false contentment, and drew him down into the ocean gloom.
STEPHEN HARRIGAN
Water and Light
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.
JACQUES COUSTEAU
Time Magazine, March 28, 1960
A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.
JACQUES COUSTEAU
attributed, Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid
Diving is an investment of time and money but the rewards can be life changing, literally.
ANDI CUMMINGS
"SDI Scuba Diver Interview", August 12, 2013
Remember when sex was safe and diving was dangerous?
ANONYMOUS
You're 30 feet underwater, the ocean is brisk, the slight current is stirring the sand, the colorful fish are swarming, the bright red lobsters are playfully harassing the neon eels -- everything seems surreal, especially the fact that you're breathing underwater.
NATALIE LAVERY
"The scuba diving experience", The Breeze, January 16, 2017
We dive not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.
ANONYMOUS
Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they've spent time in and around the ocean, and they've personally seen the beauty, the fragility, and even the degradation of our planet's blue heart.
SYLVIA EARLE
"The Best Sea and Ocean Quotes of All Time", Surfer Today, November 28, 2014
For the rich, there is therapy. For the rest of us, there is SCUBA DIVING!
ANONYMOUS
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
JACQUES COUSTEAU
Life and Death in a Coral Sea
Wake up, eat breakfast, dive, morning tea, dive, lunch, sleep, dive, afternoon tea, enjoy a beer with another beautiful sunset, dinner, some small talk about the days diving, and sleep again ... very stressful.
SHANNON BRIAN SCREAIGH
"Interview with a SCUBA Dive Instructor", The Anthrotorian, November 9, 2012
Scuba diving is separate from my therapy. But it definitely influences my recovery, because, in terms of the physical, it helps to be submerged in the water, because I can change position after being seated in a wheelchair almost all the time. It also helps me in that it excites me, it makes me feel--I don't know how to explain--I feel closer to what I am in the water. I feel different, and it helps me keep going.
TITO RAMIREZ RIVAS
"Paraplegic Man Finds Freedom Through Scuba Diving", National Geographic, February 2, 2017
I love all the unique things you see on each dive. Millions of little aquatic soap operas playing out between all the creatures. And the silence. Well, it's not really silent down there, but the roar of bubbles blocks any other sound.
KIRSTEN HUBBARD
Wanderlove
What all divers should remember is that SCUBA diving is a fun exploration of life. When you dive, don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and relax. The point of SCUBA diving is not to focus on yourself; it's to focus on the beauty of the underwater world. There's nothing to accomplish on dives.
VANESSA VITRI
Mystic SCUBA: My Adventures Diving Into Enlightenment
The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.
JACQUES COUSTEAU
attributed, The Art of Diving: And Adventure in the Underwater World
Something, most certainly, happens to a diver's emotions underwater. It is not merely a side effect of the pleasing, vaguely erotic sensation of water pressure on the body. Nor is it alone the peculiar sense of weightlessness, which permits a diver to hang motionless in open water, observing sea life large as whales around him; not the ability of a diver, descending in that condition, to slowly tumble and rotate in all three spatial planes. It is not the exhilaration from disorientation that comes when one's point of view starts to lose its "lefts" and "down" and gains instead something else, a unique perception that grows out of the ease of movement in three dimensions. It is not from the diminishment of gravity to a force little more emphatic than a suggestion. It is not solely exposure to an unfamiliar intensity of life. It is not a state of rapture with the bottomless blue world beneath one's feet ... it is some complicated mix of these emotions, together with the constant proximity of real terror.
BARRY LOPEZ
About This Life
Diving, while it is an "adventure sport," takes people into a calm and quite environment -- there are no phones, no emails, no way for the terrestrial world to contact you. A diver can drift through the water, undisturbed, and enjoy a period of quiet. The only noises are the hiss of exhalations and the munching of parrot fish. Yes, diving is generally a buddy sport, but your buddy has a regulator in his mouth and can't talk.
ANONYMOUS
Wetsuit News, October 2, 2015
Scuba diving is itself a hazardous sport. To do it without any training is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with a loaded revolver.
ROBERT F. BURGESS
The Cave Divers