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“The ocean is fundamentally presented as a series of latitude-longitude points that can be characterized by certain values across key variables <…> However, this representation fails to communicate the complexity of the ocean as a mobile space whose very essence is constituted by its fluidity…”

"One day we had wandered off to one of those damp promontories that girdle the lagoon, where the ground is made not so much of sand as of tangled roots and rotting vegetation."

"<...> this was her world, a world that seemed made especially to be scanned by her oblong eyes, to be trod by her darting steps. When you looked at her smooth skin, you felt that scales had never existed."

Italo Calvino, "Aquatic Uncle", p. 75

"Today the land has been developed by one L. J. Hooker and is covered by huge and ugly houses, while on weekends the bay is littered with yachts and motorboats, often tied one to the other so as to make more of a party or perhaps squeeze as many vessels into what has become, in reality, not a natural waterway but a parking lot."

"You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when upon my return in 1995 I found kids gleefully jumping into the harbor <...> and people swimming outside the net at Nielsen Park where as teenagers we use to carouse, drink beer, sing, make love till the early hours and transgress in many ways but never, ever, swim outside the net. Yet now it's as if the shark no longer exists."

"But very few people had boats or were in any sense, I think, oriented to the sea."

Michael Taussig, "The Beach (A Fantasy)", p. 257

"One day we had wandered off to one of those damp promontories that girdle the lagoon, where the ground is made not so much of sand as of tangled roots and rotting vegetation."

"<...> this was her world, a world that seemed made especially to be scanned by her oblong eyes, to be trod by her darting steps. When you looked at her smooth skin, you felt that scales had never existed."

Italo Calvino, "Aquatic Uncle", p. 74

"Today the land has been developed by one L. J. Hooker and is covered by huge and ugly houses, while on weekends the bay is littered with yachts and motorboats, often tied one to the other so as to make more of a party or perhaps squeeze as many vessels into what has become, in reality, not a natural waterway but a parking lot."

"You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when upon my return in 1995 I found kids gleefully jumping into the harbor <...> and people swimming outside the net at Nielsen Park where as teenagers we use to carouse, drink beer, sing, make love till the early hours and transgress in many ways but never, ever, swim outside the net. Yet now it's as if the shark no longer exists."

Michael Taussig, "The Beach (A Fantasy)", p. 256

"But very few people had boats or were in any sense, I think, oriented to the sea."

Michael Taussig, "The Beach (A Fantasy)", p. 255

"All beginning and all ending in water."

"The word gaze only applies to water. To look into this water was to look into the world, or what I thought was the world, because the sea gave one an immediate sense of how large the world was, how magnificent and how terrifying."

"The sea sounded like a thousand secrets, all whispered at the same time."

"It’s difficult to live near the sea. It overwhelms. Well, not true. It owns."

Dionne Brand, "Water"

"The word gaze only applies to water. To look into this water was to look into the world, or what I thought was the world, because the sea gave one an immediate sense of how large the world was, how magnificent and how terrifying."

"All beginning and all ending in water."

"It’s difficult to live near the sea. It overwhelms. Well, not true. It owns."

"The sea sounded like a thousand secrets, all whispered at the same time."

"I am preparing to sink into the sea <...> The three-person sub sits like a massive, oblong washing machine on the stern of the research vessel Atlantis, where a thick rope temporarily tethers it to an enormous metal A-frame rising from the ship's fantail <...> Outside, in the chilly waters of the northeastern Pacific, wetsuited escort swimmers survey the capsule exterior..."

"These sounds, I find, vitally contribute to a feeling of immersion. Submerging into the sea merges with a sense of submerging into a <...> soundscape. Such soundscapes <...> are not available to submariners without devices that permit hearing across media."

"Anyanwu tore off her cloth and dived into the sea before her confidence deserted her entirely. There, she transformed herself as quickly as was comfortable. She became the dolphin whose flesh she had eaten."

"But dolphin hearing was superior to anything she had ever created in herself. As a dolphin, she could close her eyes and perceive an only slightly diminished world around her with her ears. She could make sounds and they would come back to her as echoes bearing with them the story of all that lay before her."

Stefan Helmreich, “Submarine Cyborgs. Transductive Ethnography at the Seafloor, Juan de Fuca Ridge”,
p. 212

Stefan Helmreich, “Submarine Cyborgs. Transductive Ethnography at the Seafloor, Juan de Fuca Ridge”,
p. 217

"I am preparing to sink into the sea <...> The three-person sub sits like a massive, oblong washing machine on the stern of the research vessel Atlantis, where a thick rope temporarily tethers it to an enormous metal A-frame rising from the ship's fantail <...> Outside, in the chilly waters of the northeastern Pacific, wetsuited escort swimmers survey the capsule exterior..."

"These sounds, I find, vitally contribute to a feeling of immersion. Submerging into the sea merges with a sense of submerging into a <...> soundscape. Such soundscapes <...> are not available to submariners without devices that permit hearing across media."

Octavia E. Butler, “Chapter Five” in Wild Seed,
p. 82

"Anyanwu tore off her cloth and dived into the sea before her confidence deserted her entirely. There, she transformed herself as quickly as was comfortable. She became the dolphin whose flesh she had eaten."

Octavia E. Butler, “Chapter Five” in Wild Seed,
p. 83

"But dolphin hearing was superior to anything she had ever created in herself. As a dolphin, she could close her eyes and perceive an only slightly diminished world around her with her ears. She could make sounds and they would come back to her as echoes bearing with them the story of all that lay before her."