"To sense this world of waters known to the creatures of the sea we must shed our human perceptions of length and breadth and time and place, and enter vicariously into a universe of all pervading water. For to the sea's children nothing is so important as the fluidity of their world."

"The ocean is a place of paradoxes."

"Here in the sea mingle elements which, in their long and amazing history, have lent life and strength and beauty to a bewildering variety of living creatures..." (calcium, silica)

"Against this cosmic background the life span of a particular plant or animal appears, not as a drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change."

Pretty language

• The abyss: "utter silence and unvarying cold and eternal light"
• Tide pools: "seas in miniature"
• The ocean is "the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way."
• Within diatoms, "the sea performs a vital alchemy that utilizes the sterile chemical elements dissolved in the water and welds them with the torch of sunlight into the stuff of life."
• "The sea is not a solicitous foster mother."
• Urchins = "rotund hedgehogs of the sea"
• "The ceiling of the ocean..."