Ocean Degradation 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.

Unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die

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.

One is left with the thought that given the way we now abuse the ocean and abuse the climate that we are heading towards our own iceberg, which is looming on the horizon. It's not visible yet but it certainly exists there and it won't be my generation that has to deal with the fact that the world is not bountiful forever, that the ocean and the atmosphere are not free goods to be abused, that will have to feed these vast populations. That will be your generation.

Over the last several decades, human activity have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago.

I was studying the impacts of fishing on ocean life, while the places that I loved so much continued to decline: less and smaller fish, less corals, and more microbes. I found myself writing the obituary of nature with increasing precision. Unsatisfied and frustrated, I felt like a doctor telling the patient how she is going to die, with excruciating detail. If I were that patient, I would have fired myself and looked for a doctor who would look for a solution.

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.

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