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. Health to the ocean means health for us.

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

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

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. Health to the ocean means health for us.

With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.

'Green' issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.

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

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

Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.

As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything 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.

By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.

Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it's like going home.

Everyone has power. But it doesn't help if you don't use it.

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

For heaven's sake, when you see the enemy attacking, you pick up the pitchfork, and you enlist everybody you see. You don't stand around arguing about who's responsible, or who's going to pay.

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

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.

Health to the ocean means health for us.

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.

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.

I actually love diving at night; you see a lot of fish then that you don't see in the daytime.

I am not in any hurry to grow up.

I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.

I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.

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

I love music of all kinds, but there's no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too.

I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They're very efficient. 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.

I personally have stopped eating seafood.

I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.

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. They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.

I'm friends with James Cameron. We've spent time together over the years because he is a diver and explorer and in his heart of hearts a biologist. We run into each other at scientific conferences.

I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.

I've always said, 'Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.'

I've had the joy of spending thousands of hours under the sea. I wish I could take people along to see what I see, and to know what I know.

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

If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.

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

In terms of personal choices, let's all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.

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.

It's mainly the high-end luxury market now that drives much of the fishing in the sea. It's not feeding the starving millions. It's feeding a luxury market.

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.

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.

Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you'll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

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

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. The ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn't frightening, it was more exhilarating.

My mother was known as the 'bird lady' of the neighborhood. Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.

My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.