Marine Organisms Quotes

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen.

It's a little-appreciated fact that most of the animals in our ocean make light. I've spent most of my career studying this phenomenon called bioluminescence. I study it because I think understanding it is critical to understanding life in the ocean where most bioluminescence occurs.

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

The naturalists of yore esteemed the ocean to be a treasury of wonders, and sought therein for monstrosities and organisms contrary to the law of nature, such as they interpreted it.

There is another domain that we consider relevant and having good prospects - marine biology. For many years this region [Russian Far East] has been home for one of the leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Marine Biology.

It's a little-appreciated fact that most of the animals in our ocean make light.

Marine biology was something I was into during high school and the beginning of college.

Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.

I could take you for a walk on the beach and I could point out just about any creature and give you their Latin names.

We've explored very little of the ocean. We really don't know what's out there. But people think we've figured it all out.

We've only explored about 5% of our ocean. 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 we can't even imagine.

It is clear that if we are going to understand ocean ecosystems, we need to understand the part that bioluminescence plays in those ecosystems.

I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.

Nearly all of the major kinds of life, divisions of life, phyla of animals, occur in the sea. Only about half of them can make it to land or freshwater.

The ocean is this beautiful, unexplored place. Why on Earth everyone isn't down there, I don't know.

There is so much life underneath the water that we don't know about.

If I go out in the open ocean environment, virtually anywhere in the world, and I drag a net from 3,000 feet to the surface, most of the animals - in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent of the animals that I bring up in that net - make light. This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.

Most sponges in the ocean are sedentary: They attach themselves to a rock and sit and filter-feed the rest of their lives and reproduce, and that's about it. Not that they are not interesting, but they are not that kinetic. They are not mobile. They don't cook Krabbie Patties!

On a sea floor that looks like a sandy mud bottom, that at first glance might appear to be sand and mud, when you look closely and sit there as I do for a while and just wait, all sorts of creatures show themselves, with little heads popping out of the sand. It is a metropolis.

I suppose the marine biology was a post-teen thing. I was kind of on my way but I was one of those teenage boys who got to 13, 14 and had no idea what I was going to do. I liked natural history. I liked the outdoors. And I found the sea quite interesting.