Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
Nearly all of the major kinds of life, divisions of life, phyla of animals, occur in the sea. Only about half of them can make it to land or freshwater.
There’s something missing about how we’re informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.
If we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable, it’s primarily because of the new level of communication. It used to be, ‘What you don’t have in your mind, you have on your shelf.’ But now we have the Web.
I am not in any hurry to grow up.
This much is certain: We have the power to damage the sea, but no sure way to heal the harm.
If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.
I love music of all kinds, but there’s no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too.
Health to the ocean means health for us.
All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class – which wasn’t such a bad deal.
Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.
America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
Success underwater depends mostly on how you conduct yourself. Diving can be the most relaxing experience in the world. Your weight seems to disappear. Space travel will be available only to a few individuals for some time, but the oceans are available to almost everyone – now.
There is an enormous amount to be learned about the sea; like most wildernesses, it has great potential.
It doesn’t matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that lovely, living saltwater soup. There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. ‘Who, what, where, why, when, and how!’ They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old.
People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.
Just as we have the power to harm the ocean, we have the power to put in place policies and modify our own behavior in ways that would be an insurance policy for the future of the sea, for the creatures there, and for us, protecting special critical areas in the ocean.
What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
The most important part is to take on the challenge of protecting the ocean as if your life depends on it-because it does.