I was studying the impacts of fishing on ocean life, while the places that I loved so much continued to decline: less and smaller fish, less corals, and more microbes. I found myself writing the obituary of nature with increasing precision. Unsatisfied and frustrated, I felt like a doctor telling the patient how she is going to die, with excruciating detail. If I were that patient, I would have fired myself and looked for a doctor who would look for a solution.

The seas need their own Kyoto Protocol.

In the Mediterranean of my childhood, there were no large groupers, sharks, or whales. All I saw was seaweed and a few fish, smaller than my little diving mask. All the large animals were gone, simply because we had eaten them.

I was studying the impacts of fishing on ocean life, while the places that I loved so much continued to decline: less and smaller fish, less corals, and more microbes. I found myself writing the obituary of nature with increasing precision. Unsatisfied and frustrated, I felt like a doctor telling the patient how she is going to die, with excruciating detail. If I were that patient, I would have fired myself and looked for a doctor who would look for a solution.

Most of the reefs [around Christmas Island] are dead, most of the corals are dead, overgrown by algae, and most of the fish are smaller than the pencils we use to count them.

When I was six, all I dreamt about was becoming a diver on Jacques Cousteau's boat, the famous Calypso.

What we have now - a world without [marine] reserves - is like a debit account where we withdraw all the time and we never make any deposit. Reserves are like savings accounts.