Nearly all of the major kinds of life, divisions of life, phyla of animals, occur in the sea. Only about half of them can make it to land or freshwater.

We woke up some years ago about the consequences of ozone depletion, the hole in the atmosphere. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't smell it. But now we do regard that as a key issue. It's a scientific finding.

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

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.

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.

Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.

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.