Lots of habitat in the sea!

[A]lthough the ocean may take up 71 percent of the earth's surface, its volume accounts for as much as 97 percent of the earth's biological habitat.

Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Grove Publishing, 1998), Kindle loc.7932

Secrets in the deep ocean community

The deep ocean was such a hostile environment and it cost so many millions of dollars to go there that no one ever went there unless there was a good reason. Half the time that reason was a top-secret, national security interest of the government, and the other half it was a highly proprietary big business venture. Everybody in the deep-ocean community ran around with little secrets ricocheting around the insiders of their skulls like billiard balls at the break and talked like good ol' boys, sizing each other up. And since everybody always wanted to know what everybody else was doing, they listened real close to what you said, so you had to be careful how you phrased your questions:The community was so small and incestuous, the equipment so rare and specialized, that one word too specific and the listener could quickly calculate what you were about to do and where you were about to do it.

Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Grove Publishing, 1998), Kindle loc. 4534

Working at sea isn't a walk in the park

Offshore no one functions at 100 percent. [Mike] Williamson figured you could take anyone who performs well on the beach and put them in a small ship at sea and their productivity would drop by 90 percent. Ships the size of the Pine River pitched and rolled. They were powered by diesel engines, which were noisy and belched fumes that filled the head when the head already felt light from the rocking of the ship. Anyone who said they never got seasick was lying; seasickness incapacitated some people, greatly reduced the abilities of others, and dropped the productivity in all. . . . When you haven't slept well for days, and the engines are groaning and causing the hull itself to vibrate, and the very place you plant your feet is slick steel constantly in motion, and the entire space you have is much less than half the size of a football field, and crowded into that space are twenty other men, at least half of whom you've never seen before, and you're trying to get your work done in a sailor's three point—two feet on the deck, one hand holding on—you get to where you just can't tolerate certain things.

Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Grove Publishing, 1998), Kindle loc.4016

The impossible might not be

Working on the bottom of the deep ocean wasn't impossible, it was only considered impossible, and that was the distinction Tommy [Thompson] had learned: Other people labeled things impossible not because they couldn't be done, but because no one was doing them.

Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Grove Publishing, 1998), Kindle loc. 3625

Steinbeck ♥ Montana—but also the sea

If Montana had a seacoast, or if I could live away from the sea, I would instantly move there and petition for admission. Of all the states it is my favorite and my love.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America  (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 159 (orig. published 1962)

Jhumpa Lahiri ♥ the ocean

Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.

Jhumpa Lahiri, "Rhode Island," in Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey eds., State by State: A Panaramic Portrait of America (2008)