Susan Casey Quotes & Sayings

He even experimented on himself, hammering a sleeve into his own skull. Once this was accomplished, it was then possible to insert electrodes and inject chemicals "through small needles anywhere in the brain. — Susan Casey

All three dolphins were magnificent, absolute marvels of the ocean, and by all rights they should have been out in the Pacific, doing what 55 million years of evolution had designed them to do in the most important ecosystem on earth, instead of in here, leaping to the beat of cheesy pop songs.

As I watched, sweat trickled down the back of my neck but something else was rising: anger. The show was soul-crushingly stupid. It was plainly and inanely stupid- all of this was stupid, everything that went on at the cove, the entire arrogant, selfish relationship we had with these animals and with all of nature, as though every bit of life existed only for our purposes. We behaved as though we were gods, deciding the fate of everything, but we weren't. We were just dumb. I felt a wave of despair wash over me. — Susan Casey

Australian pro surfer Dave Rastovich, straddling his board waiting for a wave, was astonished to watch a dolphin hurtle itself at a shark that was torpedoing toward him, sending it fleeing. (Coincidentally, only two days earlier Rastovich had launched a nonprofit group, Surfers for Cetaceans, to protect dolphins and whales.) — Susan Casey

One little known fact: The water that spouts out of a whale's blowhole in such a picturesque way reeks like the most toxic fart imaginable. — Susan Casey

(A few years ago in Fushun, China, two dolphins ate strips of their tank's vinyl lining and were saved by Bao Xishun, a 7'9" Mongolian herdsman who appears in the Guinness Book of World Records as "The World's Tallest Man." When surgical tools failed, Xishun reached down the dolphins' throats with his forty-two-inch arms and extracted the plastic.) — Susan Casey

How do you think humans got so cruel?" I asked Makili. He gazed at the ocean, then back at Turner and me. "We forgot," he said, letting the words linger. "We forgot our responsibility. And we forgot that we are as equal as any living thing within the chain. There's no hierarchy in this. Nah. We are part of the same family: living things. All the rest of it is just totally fucking bullshit. — Susan Casey

The jellies living nearest the surface had transparent bodies, but their edges twinkled and flashed, as though traced by fiber-optic cables, blinking and undulating like neon signs. They were delicate; if you weren't looking — Susan Casey

The devices meant to float at sea and capture the waves' power have been destroyed in short order by . . . the waves. "they've all been smashed up in storms," Challenor said, shaking his head. — Susan Casey

[The waves] move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves. — Susan Casey

UC Santa Cruz biologist had discovered elevated levels of radiation in fish swimming among some of the 47,500 barrels of nuclear waste that the navy had dumped in a 540-square-mile area around the Farallones between 1946 and 1970. — Susan Casey

While chasing birds, he had hitchhiked through some of the most desolate places imaginable. Nicaraguan jungles, Indian slums, Samoa fruit bat colonies. But when asked to name the least likable place he'd seen in the world, he instantly pointed to an affluent California suburb: Walnut Creek, no question. — Susan Casey

No one knew exactly why the seals ate stones, but maybe, some thought, it was for ballast. Or to help digestion. Or to stave off hunger. Or, as Brown had written in the journal, 'maybe they're just weird. — Susan Casey

at the Tangalooma Island Resort in Australia, where wild bottlenoses are regularly fed fish by people standing in the shallows, biologists have documented - on twenty-three occasions - the dolphins reciprocating, swimming up to offer freshly caught tuna, eels, and octopi as gifts. — Susan Casey

In Taiji, the town was malefic and the people could be horrid, but the cove's most demanding challenges were personal ones: How do you survive your own sadness? — Susan Casey