Oceanographers

"Give me a half-tanker of iron and I'll give you an ice age."

"But this same process of the old teaching the young can also cause errors and false conclusions to accumulate with the passage of time. One should therefore study ancient writings, not so much in the hope of finding lost wisdom as in the hope of locating the origin of errors that have been, and still are, accepted truths."

"In order to arrive to a more realistic view of society, it must be recognized that there are individual differences that cannot be eradicated by the most rigid curriculum, and that various individuals will choose different educational curricula if allowed to do so."

"Each community has a curious and distorted image of itself which is always flattering."

"If we are to control our own future, it will be necessary, not only to obtain the cooperation of people, but to prepare comprehensive plans for that future."

"A good plan will therefore include alternative actions, the choice between them being left open until the passage of time indicates which is feasible and which is not."

"Most of us are unaware of our deep-seated faith in numbers."

"I shall here present the view that numbers, even whole numbers, are words, parts of speech, and that mathematics is their grammar. Numbers were therefore invented by people in the same sense that language, both written and spoken, was invented. Grammar is also an invention. Words and numbers have no existence separate from the people who use them. Knowledge of mathematics is transmitted from one generation to another, and it changes in the same slow way that language changes. Continuity is provided by the process of oral or written transmission."

"Hunting is doing business with animals."

"I was drawn to oceanography by just this kind of challenge. To me it represents the perfect intersection of science, technology and the unknown, the spark for so many breakthrough discoveries about life on our planet."

"There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can't even yet imagine. Yet we have spent only a tiny fraction of the money on ocean exploration that we've spent on space exploration. We need a NASA-like organization for ocean exploration, because we need to be exploring and protecting our life support systems here on Earth."

"and their were discovered in 1977. While the hot-water springs were predicted to occur at s, no one expected to find them colonized by exotic invertebrate faunas. Accustomed to a view of the deep sea as a food-limited environment, the puzzle of how lush communities could be maintained provoked biologists into a flurry of research activity. ... As field programs multiplied and more vent communities were discovered, biogeographic patterns in the distribution of faunas became apparent and ecological issues of requirements, , and began to be addressed. associated with diverse settings, from and s to . Massive bacterial blooms triggered by the release of nutrients during a volcanic eruption, rapid colonization of new vents by invertebrates, and burial of extant vent communities by lava flows demonstrate the dynamic nature of hydrothermal systems. Perhaps the most provocative consequence of the discovery of seafloor hydrothermal vents is the ."

"You can go for hundreds of meters along the and see nothing. But then you’ll get to a and it will be a garden of exotic creatures. The vents are like the . The seawater percolates down through cracks caused by earthquakes, and then it comes up through these underwater chimneys. There are lots of ores there like copper, gold, silver, and s. There’s so much life there, and it’s very different from what we’re used to seeing. Whenever scientists go down, we almost always find new creatures."

"in the late 1970s led to the discovery of at s. More recently, sulphide deposits containing . In addition to metal-rich ores, hydrothermal vents host ecosystems based on . Although there has been considerable effort to study the biology and ecology of vent systems in the decades since these systems were first discovered, there has been limited attention paid to conservation issues. Three priority recommendations for conservation science at hydrothermal vent settings are identified here: (i) determine the natural conservation units for key species with differing life histories; (ii) identify a set of first principles for the design of preservation reference areas and conservation areas; (iii) develop and test methods for effective mitigation and restoration to enhance the recovery of biodiversity in sulphide systems that may be subject to open-cut mining."

"ecosystems have stimulated decades of and hold promise of mineral and genetic resources that also serve societal needs. Some endemic taxa thrive only in vent environments, and vent-associated organisms are adapted to a variety of natural disturbances, from tidal variations to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In this paper, physicochemical and biological impacts of a range of human activities at vents are considered. , albeit at a local scale, based on our current understanding of ecological responses to disturbance. Natural recovery from a single mining event depends on immigration and larval recruitment and colonization; understanding processes and dynamics influencing life-history stages may be a key to effective minimization and mitigation of mining impacts. Cumulative impacts on of several mining projects in a single region, without proper management, include possible species extinctions and shifts in community structure and function."