Alan B. Sielen Quotes

Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest forms of life to regain their dominance.

The very survival of the human species depends upon the maintenance of an ocean clean and alive.... The ocean is our planet's life belt.

Over the years, I have seen the power of the oceans to excite, feed, and sustain people. I have also seen them undergo a growing onslaught of attacks, from destructive fishing practices to rising acidification.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

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.

There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.

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.

Oceans are one of the most important things in the world now and that is a national security threat of the United States of America, to be honest with you. That is why seeing the habitat destroyed is so short-sighted by us.

As an explorer, I know firsthand there are many places in the ocean so full of life that they should be protected. Coral reefs and mangrove coastlines are stressed already by climate change and ocean acidification, and poor planning will just make their plight worse.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to study the ocean before we destroy it.

As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to believe in the "inexhaustible resources of the oceans," they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction.

Overfishing, global warming and pollution are destroying the ocean.

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world. And there's no question that it is a factor, but it's preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.

Centuries-old habitats such as coral gardens are destroyed in an instant by bottom trawls, pulverized by weighted nets into barren plains. And global carbon dioxide emissions from human activity affect the ocean, changing the pH balance of the waters in a phenomenon known as ocean acidification.

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

I don't want to live in a world where I could say to my daughter, 'There used to be turtles that swam in the ocean.'

We have taken the manatees out of the areas in the Caribbean and really elsewhere in the world, and this disruption to the system makes such systems vulnerable to changes as they come by, whether it's in terms of disease or terms or global warming for that matter.

Marine scientists predict that by 2050 there will be no more large fish left in the ocean if we don't change our relationship with the sea.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors.

I'm concerned about the ocean and the environment. And I love whales.

The ocean is our planet's life support system, yet in my travels and at home, I've seen its degradation firsthand.