Enric Sala

"I assumed as a child that big fish belonged only to exotic, tropical seas. I didn’t see them in the Mediterranean I knew. But years later, in that same sea’s Medes Islands Marine Reserve, I finally saw all the fish I’d never seen before: sea bream, corvina, grouper. I saw all that had been lost to overfishing and pollution and realized that the whole Mediterranean must once have been like this."

"We are part of the ecosystem, although because we did not evolve as humans, I feel we are like an invasive species. The bottom line is that we take out of the ocean what we like, and throw in what we don’t want."

"The human footprint is everywhere, and it’s really sad. Plastic is everywhere now, from the shallows to the deepest part of the ocean. And most of the plastic in the oceans we actually cannot see, as it’s in the form of microscopic particles. But there are still a few places that have not been fished, that still show us what the ocean used to be like thousands of years ago, and that can give us hope."

", who journeyed with Sala to the South Pacific island of Palmyra in 2005, describes him as the “most stylish diver I’ve ever seen.”"