Marine Exploration Quotes

There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not.

Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn't walked on the ocean floor.

When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was my hero and the person who inspired me to become an underwater explorer. I have many other people who inspired me after him, but he is still my all-time hero.

Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't.

Most of the southern hemisphere is unexplored. We had more exploration ships down there during Captain Cook's time than now. It's amazing.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

I don't vacation on the water. I'm a pale-skinned redhead; I get sunburned out there. I'm a little frightened of the ocean, in fact. But I just know there's great drama out there.

The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.

I was interested in science or, at least, nature from an early age, learning the names of planets, cutting cartoons with facts about animals out of the newspaper and gluing them into a scrapbook, and, with a friend when I was five or six, trying to design a submarine.

There is an enormous amount to be learned about the sea; like most wildernesses, it has great potential.

The biggest yacht that I have accommodates a submarine.

My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.

I miss my boats, and I miss having the ability to be out on the water during the daytime and then go skiing at night.

My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails.

I'm not a big fan of the Mediterranean, but being in the Bay of Biscay, the sea is forever changing, and on a clear day, you see as far as Spain. It's incomparable.

I sail, scuba dive, play football, basketball.

Since my first dive in a deep-diving submersible, when I went down and turned out the lights and saw the fireworks displays, I've been a bioluminescence junky. But I would come back from those dives and try to share the experience with words, and they were totally inadequate to the task. I needed some way to share the experience directly.

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.

Yet, much of what lies beneath the ocean's surface remains a mystery, and our nation continues to rely on a confused, antiquated system of ocean governance.

There is good news. Scientists sent a probe down there in the Gulf of Mexico today and they found traces of seawater.

I fell in love with the ocean when I was just a little kid, four or five years old, I was a junior ranger, I was going out and doing intertidal stuff, walking around and sticking my finger in my first sea anemone and picking up starfish and all that. It gripped me when I was young.

Like my father and grandfather, Philippe and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, I've dedicated my life to exploring and protecting our seas, in large part through documentary film.

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.