Oceans

"You know, the ocean’s the biggest damned snowflake ever? It rolls and swells a thousand shapes and colors, no two alike."

"I didn't believe what I'd been hearing; maybe this wind blowing in just came from the ocean."

"That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man."

"Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider."

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin—his control Stops with the shore."

"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow, Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."

"The image of Eternity—the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone."

"And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers. * * * * * * And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here."

"There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine."

"For the globe as a whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabilizer of temperatures. It has been described as 'a savings bank for solar energy, receiving deposits in seasons of excessive insolation and paying them back in seasons of want. Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably harsh extremes of temperature."

"Day by day and season by season, the ocean dominates the world's climate."

"Vieil océan, tu es le symbole de l'identité: toujours égal à toi-même. Tu ne varies pas d'une manière essentielle, et, si tes vagues sont quelque part en furie, plus loin, dans quelque autre zone, elles sont dans le calme le plus complet."

"You cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free."

"Only here in this part of the universe, on Earth, is there known to be a place naturally blessed with abundant, liquid water. Not only is this the singular place with an ocean of salt water, but even more significant, it is an ocean that is filled with life that in turn, during some four billion years, has shaped the basic rocks and water of the planet into a strikingly different kind of place, a place unlike any known to exist anywhere else."

"Earth's life-support system-the ocean-is failing. But who is paying attention?...two things changed in the 20th century that may jolt us into a new way of thinking. First, more was discovered about the nature of the ocean and its relevance to the way the world works than during all preceding history. Second, during the same narrow slice of time, human actions caused more destruction to ocean systems than during all preceding history. And the pace is picking up."

"Without an ocean, there would be no life-no people anyway...Common sense forces me to consider first the incredible sweep of time that preceded this moment and the ocean's great age, relative to the infinitesimally small fragment of time enjoyed thus far by humankind."

"If I had to name the single most frightening and dangerous threat to the health of the oceans, the one that stands alone yet is at the base of all the others is ignorance: lack of understanding, a failure to relate our destiny to that of the sea, or to make the connection between the health of coral reefs and our own health, between the fate of the great whales and the future of humankind. There is much to learn before it is possible to intelligently create a harmonious, viable place for ourselves on the planet. The best place to begin is by recognizing the magnitude of our ignorance, and not destroy species and natural systems that we cannot re-create nor effectively restore once they are gone."

"There are few contemporary reviews of whole-ocean neuston ecosystems. I started with smaller studies on specific animals and worked my way through their references. One reference, in Russian Cyrillic, came up again and again. This made sense. I knew the United States and the U.S.S.R. had both developed extensive oceanographic-research programs after World War II, but each region published in its own language, making overlap difficult. I sat with a librarian for nearly an hour, hunting this study down. Finally, we found it: a 1956 study published in the U.S.S.R., in Russian, by an oceanographer named A. I. Savilov. This led us to another study of his from 1968, mercifully translated into English. Savilov spent his career studying the neuston by conducting extensive surveys all across the Pacific and synthesizing this work into a map of the open-ocean surface ecosystems. Savilov described seven unique neuston meadows in the open ocean, each with its own unique composition of animals. Just as rainforests differ from temperate forests, these neustonic ecosystems are unique."

"The Ocean Cleanup was founded with the vision of clearing the world’s ocean of Plastic. The project’s goals are ambitious, and it plans to launch approximately 60 systems to reduce “the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans by at least 90% by 2040.” It is starting with what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but is already scoping out other targets, too. Even without an environmental-impact assessment, it’s easy to imagine what will happen if the Ocean Cleanup succeeds. Neuston and plastic co-occur: They’re in the exact same spots. Cleaning up 90 percent of the plastic using the current method means potentially destroying 90 percent of the neuston. This reality is built into the project’s design. Plastics mimic the neuston world—it’s buoyant, surface bound, and rubbery. When wind and ocean currents sweep neuston through the project’s barrier, animals such as blue sea dragons will be corralled and confined in a huge trap, their fragile bodies colliding with hard and jagged surfaces. They cannot sink below or swim around. They will be suffocated, crushed, and hauled to landfills. The fact that we don’t have a solid understanding of the neuston ecosystem is even more worrying: We will have very little “before” data to compare the Ocean Cleanup’s impact against."

"The Ocean Cleanup says it wants to protect animals at the ocean’s surface from plastic, but neuston is the ecosystem of the ocean’s surface. There is a reason turtles and sunfish eat floating surface plastic: It looks like neuston. Using these wall-like barriers to collect plastic in spite of the neuston is like clear-cutting a canopy in the name of helping a forest. There is no point in collecting plastic if by the end there is nothing left to conserve."

"But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean."

"This mysterious divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth."

"Rich and various gems inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep."

"It's just hard, all right, because I'm a little fish in a big pond. A really big pond. The ocean."

"He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane," And played familiar with his hoary locks."

"There's oceans in between us, but that's not very far."

"The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things."

"Ocean man, take me by the hand. Lead me to the land that you understand, ocean man."

"Ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly."

"Alone I walked on the ocean strand, A pearly shell was in my hand; I stooped, and wrote upon the sand My name, the year, the day. As onward from the spot I passed, One lingering look behind I cast, A wave came rolling high and fast, And washed my lines away."

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear."

"Quoth the Ocean, "Dawn! O fairest, clearest, Touch me with thy golden fingers bland; For I have no smile till thou appearest For the lovely land.""

"He maketh the deep to boil like a pot."

"Past are three summers since she first beheld The ocean; all around the child await Some exclamation of amazement here: She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased, Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?"

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue; * * * * * Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

"The land is dearer for the sea, The ocean for the shore."

"Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea."

"And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face Time's iron feet can print no ruin trace."

"Deep calleth unto deep."

"A life on the ocean wave! A home on the rolling deep; Where the scattered waters rave, And the winds their revels keep!"

"The always wind-obeying deep."

"Thou wert before the Continents, before The hollow heavens, which like another sea Encircles them and thee, but whence thou wert, And when thou wast created, is not known, Antiquity was young when thou wast old."

"We follow and race In shifting chase, Over the boundless ocean-space! Who hath beheld when the race begun? Who shall behold it run?"

"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto."

"I send thee a shell from the ocean-beach; But listen thou well, for my shell hath speech. Hold to thine ear And plain thou'lt hear Tales of ships."

"Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I lay me down in peace to sleep."

"In chambers deep, Where waters sleep, What unknown treasures pave the floor."

"A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean."