Ocean Exploration Quotes

The Titanic will protect itself.

Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend - my best friend.

There's probably more history now preserved underwater than in all the museums of the world combined. And there's no law governing that history. It's finders keepers.

It is a quiet and peaceful place - and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.

We know what the surface of the moon is better than we know what the surface of the sea floor is.

Knowledge of the oceans is more than a matter of curiosity. Our very survival may hinge upon it.

The Deep Flight Challenger technology is a game-changer for ocean exploration.

Mission 31 pays homage to my grandfather's work and all aquanauts who have since followed his lead in the name of ocean exploration.

Fifty percent of the United States of America is underneath the ocean. And we have better maps of Mars than those areas.

My final question: Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea? Why do we have programs to build a habitation on Mars and we have programs to look at colonizing the Moon but we do not have a program looking at how we colonize our own planet, and the technology is at hand!

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.

I liked to use my face mask more than the diving helmet for most occasions. I was learning to hold my breath longer now and could go down almost as deep without the helmet which limited my movements.

I may say that here, as in most cases where the operations of nature interfere with the designs of man, it is not by a direct intervention on our part that we may remedy the difficulties, but rather by a precise knowledge of their causes, which may enable us, if not to check, at least to avoid the evil consequences.

When ... we realize the possibilities of deep sea life still unknown to us, every haul of the dredge should be welcomed by an expectant enthusiasm equaled in other fields only by the possible hope of communication with our sister planets.

The deep sea is the largest museum on earth, it contains more history than all the museums on land combined, and yet we're only now penetrating it.

I am really dedicated to understanding the planet/creature on which we live and know that means I must go beneath the sea to see 72 percent of what is going on.

The future is in the hands of those who explore... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.

Walking aft a few feet we stand at the steering gear of the ship. There is no cozy; wheel-house on the bridge for the quartermaster of a sailing ship! He must stand at the very stern, with an unobstructed view of the sails. When sailing "by the wind" his eye is glued to the weather-side of the uppermost sail; he keeps it drawing a trace of wind, but never lets it fill.

It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents.

The configuration of the ocean-floor is of great interest to seismologists studying the movements of the Earth's crust. Oceanographers are also able to explain certain peculiarities of ocean currents by the contour of the ocean-bed. But enormous areas are still unexplored.

Palaeontological research exhibits, beyond question, the phenomenon of provinces in time, as well as provinces in space. Moreover, all our knowledge of organic remains teaches us, that species have a definite existence, and a centralization in geological time as well as in geographical space, and that no species is repeated in time.

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

Aside from its importance to many branches of science, a knowledge of the oceans has a practical value for mankind. The intelligent development of our fishing industries, the laying of oceanic cables, the proper construction of harbor-works, oceanic commerce and navigation, as well as long-range weather forecasting, are all dependent on an understanding of the ocean.

But unless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may safely be maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent.

Forever may it remain that way. And may God bless these now-found souls.

To indicate how large a part of the Earth is covered by the oceans, we might call attention to the fact that a whole hemisphere, with its center near New Zealand, would have only one-tenth of its area as dry land! And the average depth of the seas is over two miles.

... the only other place comparable to these marvelous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, out far beyond atmosphere, between the stars, where sunlight has no grip upon the dust and rubbish of planetary air, where the blackness of space, the shining planets, comets, suns, and stars must really be closely akin to the world of life as it appears to the eyes of an awed human being, in the open ocean, one half mile down.

I am absolutely enraptured by the atmosphere of a wreck. A dead ship is the house of a tremendous amount of life-fish and plants. The mixture of life and death is mysterious, even religious. There is the same sense of peace and mood that you feel on entering a cathedral.

Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn't enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.

Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view the empty cradle of the ocean.

There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream.

Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction - up, down, sideways - by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.

Moreover it is becoming the Britons, whether scientific or unscientific, who boast at all fitting occasions of their aptitude to rule the waves, should know something of the population of their saline empire, especially of those parts of it immediately in contact with their terrestrial domain, and the coasts of the Continent to which our United Kingdom appertains.

It is pleasant to notice that the harmony between the naturalists and officers of the "Blake" was not for an instant disturbed during the time they were working in common. Everything in the way of naval routine was sacrificed for the time to the objects of the cruise, and the appearance of the deck and bow of the Blake was often more that of a mud-scow than of a vessel in the service of the United States.

NASA's annual budget for space exploration could fund NOAA's budget for ocean exploration for 1600 years.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.

Zero of Animal Life probably about 300 fathoms.

...It is a very remarkable fact that the species of shell-fish common to Greenland and Finmark are not all inhabitants of deep or moderately deep water .... That these littoral mollusks indicate by their presence on both sides of the Atlantic, some ancient continuity or contiguity of coast-line is what I firmly believe.

A great number of soundings, mainly along the continental slope of the New England States were also taken by the vessels of the United States Fish Commission. Important soundings were made by the United States Fish Commission steamer ALBATROSS in the Caribbean, during the winter of 1883-1884.

Of all the ships that have been devoted to biological explorations of the sea, none has surpassed the endeavors conducted on board the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross, during her 39 years of service from 1882 to 1921.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.

In the course of time I have learned to tramp about coral reefs, twenty to thirty feet under water, so unconcernedly that I can pay attention to particular definite things. But after all my silly fears have been allayed, even now, with eyes overflowing with surfeit of color, I am still almost inarticulate. We need a whole new vocabulary, new adjectives, adequately to describe the designs and colors of under sea.

My familiarity with the successful use of very long steel ropes for mining purposes naturally suggested their adaptation to the new purpose of deep sea work.

There are more active volcanoes beneath the sea than on land by two orders of magnitude.

As we descend deeper and deeper in this region its inhabitants become more and more modified, and fewer and fewer, indicating our approach towards an abyss where life is either extinguished , or exhibits but a few sparks to mark its lingering presence.