Edith Widder Quotes

"Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth. So let's all go exploring."

"Squid experts have been debating for some time about whether the giant squid is a passive predator that just floats around in the water and waits to bump into something. I was never one to imagine it to be passive."

"There's a lionfish cookbook put out by the Reef Environmental Educational Foundation, and it tells you how to catch them, how to clean them."

"Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth."

"I think I have the best job in the world. Seventy-one percent of the planet is covered by water, we've explored less than five percent of the ocean, and there are so many fabulous discoveries that have yet to be made."

"I loved anything to do with animals from a very early age."

"I just was mesmerized by all of this life everywhere I looked. And so I wanted to be a marine biologist."

"I never, ever would have imagined the kind of career I've had. It just wouldn't have occurred to me that anything like this could have been possible. I didn't have any such aspirations. And I still can't believe my good fortune."

"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."

"In 2010, there was a TED event called Mission Blue held aboard the Lindblad Explorer in the Galapagos as part of the fulfillment of Sylvia Earle's TED wish. I spoke about a new way of exploring the ocean, one that focuses on attracting animals instead of scaring them away."

"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 need a NASA-like organization for ocean exploration, because we need to be exploring and protecting our life support systems here on Earth."

"The one thing I've learned exploring the deep is that you just can't even begin to imagine some of the bizarre creatures that are down there."

"Giant squid aren't rare. Based on the number of beaks that have been found in the stomachs of sperm whales, it's thought that there are actually millions of them in the ocean, and yet, we haven't seen them."

"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."

"When caught in the clutches of a predator, the jelly produces a light display that is a pinwheel of light that is basically a call for help. It serves to attract the attention of a larger predator that may attack their attacker, thereby affording them an opportunity for escape."

"If we are to be good stewards of the ocean, we need to understand what lives there and how the animals interact with each other and with their environment, which means we need to be constantly seeking new and improved methods for exploration and observation."

"It is clear that if we are going to understand ocean ecosystems, we need to understand the part that bioluminescence plays in those ecosystems."

"This is part of what's driving me, is this feeling like there's so much yet to be discovered in the oceans, and we're destroying it before we even know what's in it."

"That's a real problem when people bring exotics into their homes. Sometimes it's by accident, but sometimes it's on purpose."

"I developed my camera system, called the Medusa, jointly with a colleague down in Australia as a method of exploring the ocean unobtrusively. The critical thing was that we didn't use white light, which I believe has been scaring the animals away."

"I developed an optical lure that imitates certain types of bioluminescent displays that I think might be attractive to large predators. The other way to do it is just use dead bait, but I think dead bait attracts scavengers, and we wanted to attract active predators."

"The giant squid has the biggest eyes of any animal on the planet. It's a visual predator."

"Now we have new tools for exploring the deep and have to pull together a deep exploration program that takes advantage of them."