This much is certain: We have the power to damage the sea, but no sure way to heal the harm.

In the past few decades, Earth's natural systems have endured more pressure than in all preceding human history.

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.

What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.

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.

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