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The following are some famous environmental quotes centered on the theme of oceans, fisheries, lakes, rivers, and water use. If you would like to go to the online environmental forum Click Here.
“Salmon farming—the placement of large metal or mesh net cages in the ocean to grow fish—was pioneered in Norway in the 1960s. Since then, the industry has expanded to Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the US, and Chile, but is dominated by the same multinational corporations. Wherever it is practiced, net-cage salmon farming is controversial and raises serious environmental concerns.”
- David Suzuki Foundation
“The small fisherman ... is the one that is suffering. It's the large corporations and their big draggers and trawlers and long-liners that are destroying the oceans. We hear all this talk that it's the conservationists that are putting the poor fishermen out of work, but what we never hear about is, for example, that the Norwegian drag-trawler fleet went down the coast of India and took everything, and as a result, one million Indian fishermen are out of work and those fishing communities are totally devastated. That's not a story you see in the New York Times... The biggest loss of [fishing] jobs is from these corporations and heavy-gear technologies, which are destroying the fish.”
- Paul Watson
“Fish Friendly Farming allows a farmer to learn about the best practices for obtaining improved environmental conditions on the farm while retaining economic efficiency for small family farmers. It is a blueprint to assist us and give us encouragement to modify our practices and gain some positive recognition for our efforts.”
- Bev Wasson
“Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.”
- Henry Ward Beecher
“Longliners in the American Atlantic discard, dead, about 40 percent of the swordfish they catch -- the fish are too small to sell. In 1996 Atlantic swordfishers dumped 40,000 dead juvenile swordfish. Like a maladaptive parasite that kills its own host, longline depletion caused the amount of East Coast swordfish brought to port to plummet almost 60 percent from 1989 to 1996.”
- Carl Safina
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
“Among these treasures of our land is water-fast becoming our most valuable, most prized, most critical resource. A blessing where properly used-but it can bring devastation and ruin when left uncontrolled.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a saltwaste, because of the wickedness of those who lived there.”
- Psalm 107:33-34
“The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.”
- Chief Seattle
“All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”
- Kabir
“At sea 200 miles southwest of Iceland last summer, the crew of a super-trawler big enough to contain a dozen Boeing 747 jumbo jets.... Each ship was trawling nets with opening circumferences of almost two miles; that's the equivalent of 10 New York City blocks wide by two Empire State Buildings high.”
- Dick Russell
“Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world's food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and livestock waste -- some of it toxic.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', under the heading 'Oceans', the statement signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come.”
- Jeremiah 3:2-3
“The oceans are in trouble; the coasts are in trouble; our marine resources are in trouble. These are not challenges we can sweep aside.”
- James Watkins
“The recent decades' catastrophes in ocean fisheries are among many signs of lack of societal will in resource management contexts. Although abundant theory, and sometimes adequate information from fisheries activities exist, continuous surprises and stock failures provides impetus to revise not only the basic theory of re-source management, but even the philosophies of conventional fisheries management practice. Gross perturbations of ecosystem structures due to fishing have often been denied. Habitat degradation and losses, along with declining natural biodiversity define the principal issues of anadromous and estuarine species. Uncertainties of context-free fisheries stock assessments form the bases of legal contentions. Pitting government science against industry lawyers is clearly ineffective. Beyond CPUE, Yield-per-Recruit, VPA, and their associated faulty assumptions, necessary information need to be defined and integrated into ecosystem-wide monitoring, resource assessments, and management processes. We have a global crisis needing revolution, not consensual fiddling.”
- Gary D. Sharp
“The sea is the universal sewer.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“About half of the nation's waters surveyed by states do not adequately support aquatic life because of excess nutrients... Nutrients have also been associated with both the large hypoxia zone in the gulf of Mexico ... and the Pfisteria-induced fish kills and human health problems in the coastal waters of several East Coast and Gulf states.”
- Environmental Protection Agency
“Every eight months, nearly 11 million gallons of oil run off our streets and driveways into our waters—the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.”
- America’s Living Oceans
“No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's waterways that belong to all the people, as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one state, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson
“The number of people displaced by dams is estimated at between 40 million and 80 million, most of them in China and India. The costs of dams were on average 50% above their original estimate. Some designed to reduce flooding made it worse, and there were many unexpected environmental disadvantages, including the extinction of fish and bird species. Half the world's wetlands had been lost because of dams.”
- Paul Brown
“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.”
- Jacques Cousteau
“No other parameter of such ecological importance has been changed so drastically in such a short period of time by human activities as dissolved oxygen contents in the world’s oceans,”
- Robert J. Diaz
“Rising oil prices have focused the world's attention on the depletion of oil reserves. But the depletion of underground water resources from overpumping is a far more serious issue. Excessive pumping for irrigation to satisfy food needs today almost guarantees a decline in food production tomorrow.”
- Lester Brown
“Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world's surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40% of the world's population. Pollution of rivers, lakes and ground water further limits the supply.”
- 'Warning to Humanity', under the heading 'Water Resources', the statement signed by 1600 senior scientists from 70 countries including 102 Nobel Prize laureates on November 18, 1992.
“Friends of the River supports the Fish Friendly Farming program because of the large environmental benefits gained from cooperation with farmers and landowners in restoration projects and the comprehensive nature and sound scientific basis for the program.”
- Betsy Reifsnider
“When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“Fish populations have declined dramatically in coastal areas, the major fisheries habitat. We're seeing the chemistry of the water changing, as the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are getting higher and higher. Last year, we identified 11 new species of toxic organisms in the coastal areas of the United States because the chemistry is changing.”
- Dr. D. James Baker
“In the Gulf of Mexico alone, offshore shrimpboats discarded 9.6 billion fish in a single year. That's enough fish to reach the moon and back twice with enough left over to more than circle the equator - and that's just 13 species out of more than 100 species in the bycatch. A more recent study revised the bycatch figure. We now know that just two species in the Gulf shrimp bycatch total about 16 billion fish.”
- Mike Leech
“by 1988, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared that every fish species along the Atlantic Coast, and especially the Northeast, was fully exploited or overharvested.”
- Nicholas Karas
“No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.”
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.”
- Sandra Postel
“One does not have to live near the sea to love it.”
- Jacques Cousteau
“Water is the driver of nature.”
- Leonardo da Vinci