Quote

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.

Finding animals that make light in the ocean is easy. Just drag a net through the water anywhere in the upper 3000 feet, and as many as 80-90% of the animals you catch can make light. The biomimetic lure that I developed imitates one of these - a common deep sea jellyfish called Atolla.

One way to understand light in the ocean of air is by flying it. Life in the air is an extension of perceiving.

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.

We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

I really feel that there are things in the ocean that we have no idea about.

We've only explored about five percent 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 that we can't even yet imagine.

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.

One of the things that's frustrated me as a deep-sea explorer is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about because of the way we explore the ocean.

Oceans are one of the most important things in the world now and that is a national security threat of the United States of America, to be honest with you. That is why seeing the habitat destroyed is so short-sighted by us.