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Protecting vital sources of renewal - unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens - will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.
Many of us ask what can I, as one person, do, but history shows us that everything good and bad starts because somebody does something or does not do something.
The concept of 'peak oil' has penetrated the hearts and minds of people concerned about energy for the future. 'Peak fish' occurred around the end of the 1980s.
Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.
There is not a well-funded campaign among scientists to say, "Look, here's the evidence. You can read it yourself. Here are the facts. We're not making this up."
I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.
When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.
The very energy sources that have gotten us to where we are now are also, if we continue doing what we're doing, a shortcut to the end of all that we hold near and dear.
Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
The Arctic is an ocean. The southern pole is a continent surrounded by ocean. The North Pole is an ocean, or northern waters. It's an ocean surrounded by land, basically.
Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.
Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.
I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us.
I've spent thousands of hours under water. And even in the deepest dive I have ever made, 2.5 miles (about 4 kilometers) down, I saw trash and other tangible evidence of our presence.
Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.
With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea.
Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks.
If Darwin could get into a submarine and see what I've seen, thousand of feet beneath the ocean, I am just confident that he would be inspired to sit down and start writing all over again.
For heaven's sake, when you see the enemy attacking, you pick up the pitchfork, and you enlist everybody you see. You don't stand around arguing about who's responsible, or who's going to pay.
Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.
We have the capacity to alter the nature of nature. No, we don't have just the capacity - we are altering the nature of nature, the natural systems that cause the planet to function in our favor.
We've got to somehow stabilize our connection to nature so that in 50 years from now, 500 years, 5,000 years from now there will still be a wild system and respect for what it takes to sustain us.
Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.
The observations that have developed over the years have given us perspective about where we fit in. We are newcomers, really recent arrivals on a planet that is four and a half billion years old.
I'm friends with James Cameron. We've spent time together over the years because he is a diver and explorer and in his heart of hearts a biologist. We run into each other at scientific conferences.
We are blessed with a place that is open to the universe and, despite this, supports this very thin envelope of air we call atmosphere, which holds just the right amount of oxygen for us to breathe.
With respect to the ocean being the heart of our blue planet: We are often asked, 'How much protection is enough?' We can only answer with another question: How much of your heart is worth protecting?
Look at a child and realize that their future is in your hands. It's not just those who will be here fifty years from now. The decisions we make in the next ten years will shape the next 10,000 years.
It's baffling why the issues relating to climate change - [which] have far more obvious and tangible and much more clear-cut evidence about the cause - have been slower for people to accept as a given.
Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It's agriculture. It's golf courses. It's domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.
When you are a child you learn your alphabet, your numbers, but increasingly, we must learn from the earliest stages that the highest priority has to be to maintain the world as a safe place for humankind.
My first encounter with the ocean was on the Jersey Shore when I was three years old and I got knocked over by a wave. The ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn't frightening, it was more exhilarating.
Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher - and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the 'National Geographic' covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.
Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.
I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.
Rather than be afraid of evolution and try to stifle inquiry, people should revel in the joys of knowing and find a serenity and a joy in being a part the rest of life on Earth. Not apart from it, but a part of it.
Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.
It's a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments.
The sudden release of five million barrels of oil, enormous quantities of methane and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into an already greatly stressed Gulf of Mexico will permanently alter the nature of the area.
We couldn't go to the moon on whale oil. We don't have the capacity yet to consider doing such things as harnessing current sunlight. We're burning ancient sunlight in order to get us to where we now are. But it's costly.
It doesn't matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that lovely, living saltwater soup. There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
We woke up some years ago about the consequences of ozone depletion, the hole in the atmosphere. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't smell it. But now we do regard that as a key issue. It's a scientific finding.
Even our rules and regulations, our laws, our policies, favor the destructive nature of taking too much from the ocean and using techniques that are horribly destructive. We know they don't work. We know it's not sustainable.
I would love to slip into the skin of a fish and know what it's like to be one. They have senses that I can only dream about. They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.
There are now more than 4,000 places in the sea around the world that have some kind of protection. The bad news: You have to look hard to find them. What you find instead is destructive fishing, mining, gas and oil exploration.
I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.
By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.