“The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.”

Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.

The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it.

If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.

Health to the ocean means health for us.

Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe.

Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.

You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica.

It’s a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments.

I would love to slip into the skin of a fish and know what it’s like to be one. They have senses that I can only dream about.

Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.

My first encounter with the ocean was on the Jersey Shore when I was three years old and I got knocked over by a wave.

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.

Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative – don’t wait for someone else to ask you to act.

Protecting vital sources of renewal – unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens – will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.

The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.

The soul that beholds beauty becomes beautiful.

Before God could bring me to this place He has broken me a thousand times.

Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever.

There is something about New Orleans that embodies passion; I’ve never seen that before.

I must first have the sense of God’s possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me.