Quotes About Reefs

#1. At sixty a man has passed most of the reefs and whirlpools ... That man has awakened to a new youth ... Ergo, he is young.

George Luks

#2. The economic value of ecotourism related to coral reefs alone totals some $9 billion.

Timothy Beatley

#3. The sun was just down and to the west lay reefs of bloodred clouds up out of which rose little desert nighthawks like fugitives from some great fire at the earth's end.

Cormac McCarthy

#4. I think that most people would associate big schools of fish with healthy coral reefs. At Kingman, the predators keep the herd thin, so there aren't a lot of big fish schools.

Brian Skerry

#5. The big icebergs that drift into warmer water melt much more rapidly under water than on the surface, and sometimes a sharp, low reef extending two or three hundred feet beneath the sea is formed. If a vessel should run on one of these reefs half her bottom might be torn away.

Edward Smith

#6. Genres are like the surface of the ocean. There are waves and things moving, but you don't instantly see all the reefs and ecosystems that's happening beneath the surface.

Charlie Jane Anders

#7. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps. - Chapter 21

Kurt Vonnegut

#8. Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to "animalcules," have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance.

James Dwight Dana

#9. The Bahamas has mangrove nurseries, coral reefs, shallow sea grass beds, and deep oceanic trenches - all perfect ecosystems for sharks. Photographing multiple shark species in exquisite water was the assignment I had dreamed about from the start.

Brian Skerry

#10. The northeast trade winds that blow at a steady fifteen knots onto the cliffs and reefs of the islands' lee shores produce endless trains of eminently glidable waves.

Simon Winchester

#11. Oman overall has great animal and plant biodiversity because it has mountains, desert, coastal areas and rich coral reefs.

Saadi

#12. As an explorer, I know firsthand there are many places in the ocean so full of life that they should be protected. Coral reefs and mangrove coastlines are stressed already by climate change and ocean acidification, and poor planning will just make their plight worse.

Philippe Cousteau Jr.

#13. I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

Sylvia Earle

#14. Practically the whole world depends on coral reefs, so if the coral reefs get all killed, then the ocean will start going out of whack, and if the ocean goes out of whack, something might happen on land.

Alexander Gould

#15. I watched the coral reefs that I studied as a student vanish in the blink of an eye, and for decades I wrote and spoke of ocean obituaries. But big scary problems without solutions lead to apathy, not action.

Nancy Knowlton

#16. You simply cannot make more (reefs), unless you have a few thousand years to wait.

Doug Rader

#17. Earth has scarcely an acre that does not remind us of actions that have long preceded our own, and its clustering tombstones loom up like reefs of the eternal shore, to show us where so many human barks have struck and gone down.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

#18. 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.

Sylvia Earle

#19. Shame, which is the reluctance to be who we're not even sure we are, could end up being the deepest thing about us, deeper even than who we are, as though beyond identity were buried reefs and sunken cities teeming with creatures as we couldn't begin to name because they came long before us.

Andre Aciman

#20. I build a book the way coral reefs are built: millions of little calcareous skeletons piling up one atop another, though in my case the skeletons are drafts.

Dean Koontz

#21. within the next fifty years or so "all coral reefs will cease to grow and start to dissolve.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#22. That includes not cutting down the rain forest, and stop polluting the ocean because once we kill the coral reefs and the rain forest, this earth is toast.

Michael Berryman

#23. For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

Brian Skerry

#24. Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.

Sylvia Earle

#25. Sail on, sail on, o' might Ship of State. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on.

Leonard Cohen

#26. The main line of the Yugoslav Attack has become just too vast for most players to study in depth, and anyone intending to venture into such tricky waters needs to have an intimate knowledge of all the hidden reefs.

John Nunn

#27. A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.

Jacques Maritain

#28. There are ecosystems like coral reefs [at risk] through ocean acidification. Those are valuable things that we should protect.

Bill Gates

#29. On the periscope ... What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida - three to four tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras ... I can see [lake] Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the reefs.

Alan Shepard

#30. I told him I was sick unto death of miniwomen, miniclothes, miniloves, minideaths and my own damned minilife. I wanted empty cays, gaudy reefs, hot sun, swift fish, and maybe some talk when it was time for talking.

John D. McDonald

#31. Permissiveness, immorality, pornography, drugs, the power of peer pressure-all these and more-cause many to be tossed about on a sea of sin and crushed on the jagged reefs of lost opportunities, forfeited blessings, and shattered dreams.

Thomas S. Monson

#32. Coral reefs represent some of the world's most spectacular beauty spots, but they are also the foundation of marine life: without them many of the sea's most exquisite species will not survive.

Sheherazade Goldsmith

#33. In the year 2007, seals, otters, lions, turtles, frogs, apes, snakes, butterflies, polar bears, cheetahs, whales are disappearing along with their variously furnished homes: cloud forests, rain forests, ice pack, boreal forests, coral reefs, forests of deciduous trees, conifer and palm.

Eban Goodstein

#34. History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.

R. Buckminster Fuller

#35. The trend for rewilding our cities is growing. It's positive, it enlightens, it's widespread, and it helps. We need to retrofit and reimagine cities as planet-friendly citadels. They're our hives and reefs. Sea mussels aren't the only animals living in individual shells that are glued together.

Diane Ackerman

#36. The north coast of Brittany is eaten into bays from which the sea retreats to considerable distances, and is fringed with reefs and islands. It is a favourite resort of Parisians throughout its stretch, from Dinard to Plestin.

Sabine Baring-Gould

#37. Most of the reefs [around Christmas Island] are dead, most of the corals are dead, overgrown by algae, and most of the fish are smaller than the pencils we use to count them.

Enric Sala

#38. To the untrained (human) eye, Thalassinia looks like an expanse of coral reefs and volcanic formations. There are no straight lines or geometric shapes to give away the fact that the structures are actually mermade. (Get it? Mermade. Like mermaid, but ... oh, never mind.)

Tera Lynn Childs

#39. This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing ... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef.

Robert Reed

#40. Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.

Julius Caesar

#41. We have changed. We are no longer, as I said, bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological components.

Terence McKenna