I prefer sayings over jokes.

I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.

There's probably more history now preserved underwater than in all the museums of the world combined. And there's no law governing that history. It's finders keepers.

The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight - previously thought to be the font of all Earth's life - has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on geothermal heat, then life could exist under similar conditions on planets far removed from the nurturing light of our parent star, the Sun.

It is a quiet and peaceful place - and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.

My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard.

Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend - my best friend.