“This is the time, perhaps as never before, and never again, for a new ethic: to do for the oceans in the 21st century–through technologies, through new understanding, through new insights–what was done in the 20th century for aviation, for aerospace.

“Where does GIS come in to all of this? I’ll put it another way. Where doesn’t GIS come in to the understanding of the ocean? After all, marine ecosystems, just as those on the land, are geospatial, and therefore so are the solutions that we must craft as we go forward.”

–Dr. Sylvia Earle in her keynote address at the 1999 Esri User Conference