“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.”

The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.

I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind.

The fragility, and even the degradation of our planet’s blue heart.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher – and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.

There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

On a sea floor that looks like a sandy mud bottom, that at first glance might appear to be sand and mud, when you look closely and sit there as I do for a while and just wait, all sorts of creatures show themselves, with little heads popping out of the sand. It is a metropolis.

Health to the ocean means health for us.

No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea.

For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive – and thrive. ‘Harsh’ to us is ‘home’ for them.

Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean.

Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat.

Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away.

Large areas of the Gulf have escaped being scraped by trawls, crushed by more than 40,000 miles of pipelines, or displaced by one of 50,000 oil and gas wells drilled since the middle of the 20th century. Some places have been deliberately protected.

We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

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.

Great or small–to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.

Whenever, in any century, whether in a single heart or in a company of believers.

The new century has brought on its own terrible dangers, which although not reaching the apocalyptic potential of the Cold War, still have the capacity to shake our world.

The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.

An 18th century brain, in a 21st century head.

Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature.

The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century.

The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste.