“We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.”

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.

A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.

Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.

We did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

My mother was known as the ‘bird lady’ of the neighborhood.

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.

Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class – which wasn’t such a bad deal.

They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers.

Every fish fertilizes the water in a way that generates the plankton that ultimately leads back into the food chain, but also yields oxygen, grabs carbon – it’s a part of what makes the ocean function and what makes the planet function.

Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons

Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds… true love?

Beer is sacred business, a mood-altering food substance that may have preserved the human species.

Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.

It is easier for a libertarian to attack the science of global warming than to alter one’s core libertarian beliefs.

Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities.

I couldn’t think. The basics of my life seemed altered and thrown into question.

Telling them to stop isn’t going to help. There has to be some incentive for them to alter their behavior.