Discoveries and challenges: navigating the oceanic great unknown

Abstract My career has enabled me to explore the life of several oceans and of ecosystems from the epi- and mesopelagic to the deep sea and to contribute to their stewardship. However, like Newton before me, I have been like a boy playing on the seashore while before me lay the great ocean, still mysterious in its workings and still mostly treated poorly and roughly by humanity. I came of age when graduate school was still seen as a rite of passage into the academy, and within the academy, success was based on publication in professional journals with a high impact factor. But effective science-based stewardship in an era of growing anthropogenic pressures will depend upon scientific input to networks at all levels of society, not just the academy: educational institutions, the media, government agencies, public and private corporations, community and conservation groups, and the political process itself. Science today, as always, has its exciting Eureka! moments, when hitherto unrecognized patterns in the life of the oceans are uncovered, but it increasingly requires clear and principled communication of truth to power.