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.
Sharks freak me out.
I spent three weeks on a converted shrimp trawler with 17 people, two toilets, and one shower, all the while diving every day with very active sharks.
I famously tasted shark fin soup many, many years ago before we understood exactly what was going on with the harvesting of sharks. I’ve consequently come out against it. I make personal choices in my life and stand behind them.
There’s a cardinal rule that you don’t talk about sharks. If you don’t see it, it’s not there.
Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks.
Lose the sharks, the mighty, mysterious lords of the deep, and our planet’s oceans would be infinitely poorer places.
The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark.
I hope that ‘Jaws’ will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment.
The bohar snapper – they have these huge canines. I got bit by one. One took a chunk out of my ear – they are much scarier than the sharks.
Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.
It’s not normal to go into a house and see a pond in the middle of the living room full of baby sharks. It’s not normal to go to someone’s garage and see a private plane.
I think I’ve always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was ‘your’ boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get ‘you.’
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
I think that people need to become more educated about money. We need to stop creating systems that benefit only the most-cutthroat sharks.
If the world’s oceans have had nearly half a billion years with sharks as the apex predators, then the delicate balance of its food webs must rely on their presence in complex ways we cannot possibly predict.
When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer.
Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you’re more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!
The studios will go wherever they smell money. It’s like sharks to the blood.
I’ve been painting and drawing fish since I was very young. My mom found old pictures I did when I was around 6 or 7 of all these sharks and scuba diver looking back, a big ship, throwing a harpoon. There was already a message within what I saw.
When I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called ‘extreme’ shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I’m terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice.
Most people don’t know that humans kill 100 million sharks every year, mostly for a really expensive soup in Asia.
People generally thought that sharks are dumb eating machines. After some study, I began to realize that these ‘gangsters’ of the deep had gotten a bad rap.
For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.
New England waters are some of my favorite – they are some of the richest waters because they are temperate waters and nutrient-rich, and therefore provide food for so many animals, from giant whales to sharks to everything else.
I seek out things that terrify me, like an improv class. I’m terrified of sharks, but I scuba dive. I’m not good at auditioning, but I force myself to do it all the time. I’ve never met anybody who is fearless, but the more you push against your own boundaries, the easier it becomes to push.
Bull sharks get quite a lot of bad press.
French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.
I still think there’s a big part of the population that has a lot of misinformation about sharks. But I think it’s beginning to change a little bit. As good information about sharks permeates popular culture, things may start to change.
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.
You know how it is in L.A. At times, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. There’s a lot of sharks. I think with YouTube, we’re anti that. We’re anti-competitive. We’re all about collaborating and supporting.
Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.
I have done everything I have ever wanted to do. I have swum with tiger sharks, been charged by lions and elephants. I have been shot three times, chased by crocodiles and, God be praised, I’ve made enough money that I can continue to do all the things I want to for as long as I am able.
I’ve come through it and seen people in football that are sharks. They are ones to stay away from.
When the money gets bigger and the stakes get higher, the sea gets wider, and the sharks in the water grow sharper teeth.
We’re humans. We live on land. Sharks live in water. So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.
I’ve swam with great white sharks.
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