ocean

The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.

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.

My grandfather was Jacques Cousteau, a pioneer of ocean exploration and the co-inventor of scuba diving. Back in the 1940s when he tested out his invention which allowed humans to swim freely in the ocean with a portable air source for the first time in history, very little of the ocean had been explored let alone captured on film.

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It'll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn't been reusable.

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.

It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

When the fishbowl gets too small, it's time to pack up and leave and jump into the lake or ocean.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.

The earliest memories I have of the ocean are actually stories - stories from my grandfather, the legendary ocean explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau. My passion for ocean conservation stems from learning at a very young age that we're all connected; we're all in this together.

Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

Living life at a young age is like being a sponge thrust into the ocean. You absorb what's around you. If you're around people who are supportive and positive, that's how you look at the world.

The movie that's had the most effect on me is Jaws. To this day when I'm in the ocean, I'm hearing that music.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.

I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.