It's taken us a short time to change the nature of nature. In my lifetime, more change than during all preceding human history put together.

Ignorance is the biggest problem of all for the ocean - and for many other things as well.

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

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.

Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.

Throughout all of human history we've enjoyed certain benign circumstances: an envelope of atmosphere, an envelope of temperature. A kind of resilience that if you cut down trees, then they'll grow back. You take fish, they recover. You put stuff into the atmosphere that you know is not good for us, but we can still breathe. We haven't awakened, generally, to the sense of urgency that does exist.

Everybody can make choices that will make peace with the natural world.