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Sorry if that sounds boring, but it's true! I think we humans take the ocean and all it provides terribly for granted. We expect to take whatever we want from it, to throw whatever we don't want into it, and for it to continue to support every living thing on this earth. I think it deserves a bit more respect!

So as well as the ocean being many other things to me - a playground, a resource, an inspiration, a big, scary, beautiful mass of water...above all, I think I have a personal responsibility to look after it as best I can.

Ali Teo is an illustrator who works across a range of mediums and for a wide variety of clientele, from corporate and advertising work to children's book illustration. She is also a judge for the Ocean:Views competition.

The glimpse of something half-seen and then gone, a large swirl of water and dark shape at the surface, the flash of a kingfish startled in shallow water.  This fascination was the wellspring for a career in marine science and the sense of mystery has extended to include the boundaries of knowledge, to glimpse something new in the unseen depths.  New insight and discovery are highly rewarding personally, but also collectively provide the new knowledge we need for informed and responsible stewardship of our oceans. A new visitor centre as part of the Leigh Marine Laboratory has been sponsored by the Edith Winstone Blackwell trust.  The visitor centre will communicate the value of our marine estate and the power and excitement of science. To end with a quote from Edith herself (1877-1956) New knowledge brings new light - walk in it.

Professor John Montgomery holds a Personal Chair in Biological Sciences, and is the Chair of Marine Science at the University of Auckland, and Director of the Leigh Marine Laboratory.

A little inspiration for you filmmakers out there.

Check out Disney's latest film, Oceans - a spectacular story about remarkable creatures under the sea (in Rialto cinemas across New Zealand April 7, 2011).

But those are all empty words - you cannot anthropomorphize something that created life itself.

In truth I don't even like to refer to the ocean as 'my' anything, and it might be more revealing to look instead at what am I to the ocean.

At one time the ocean was wrenched in all directions by a crowding moon, with tides 1000 feet high.  It seethed with hydrovents and cooling lava, and was bombarded by meteors.  In this turbulent broth it created life, coaxing it towards more complex forms.  I am merely an example of one of those forms, who has evolved the means to depart the ocean for a life on land, taking with me a small piece of the ocean (for 70% of my body is water).  From this vantage point I can both look upon it from the outside, marveling its infinite beauty, and dive into it to merge again with our planet's great womb.  I envy the fish and dolphins their complete mastery of the aquatic realm, but I know that as a visitor I will never again take their world for granted.  And it will always take my breath away. literally.

William Trubridge is a world champion and world record holding free-diver. Trubridge is the first human ever to break the 100m barrier unassisted.

I've been fortunate enough to travel round the world in my life, but no matter where I went and how amazing or beautiful it was, I never once thought I'd like to stay away from Aotearoa for good. The one thing above all others (besides the family, of course) that brought me back was the Tasman and the Pacific.

The ocean is my favourite part of life in New Zealand. Whether it's getting pummeled by the surf on the West coast, or just grooving in a summer warmed, still and idyllic bay on the East coast, I reckon swimming in the ocean is good for what ails ya.

Otis Frizzell is an artistic innovator, style leader, artist, hip hop performer, radio personality, tattooist and graphic designer. He is also a judge for the Ocean:Views competition.

Growing up it was heading north from Whangarei to a wee beach called Oakura. Hours were spent clambering over rocks, and looking under them for starfish, crabs and tiny shrimp. I learnt to snorkel in a tiny rock pool (the most silly, difficult place to learn, really), and soon ventured into the ocean: I saw my first octopus and seahorse at Oakura, and got a feeling for how amazing the ocean is. From there it was bodyboarding at my new home near Mt Maunganui, or kayaking in rivers and the ocean in and around the Bay of Plenty. If you're ever having a rubbish day, the ocean somehow washes it away. Far away. Works everytime. It's a giant, unexplored place - there's so much left out there. I'm fascinated by cryptozoology; the study of hidden animals - and most the fun stuff written about exists in the ocean. It's a trippy place.

David Farrier is the Technology and Entertainment journalist for TV3’s 'News’ and 'Nightline’.

Literally! Sometimes it comes rumbling up the stoney beach and knocks on that door! A previous inhabitant of the site told me that living there was 99% paradise and 1% sheer terror and I think he got that pretty much right! And while those extremes can be a bit unsettling it’s the constant changes of landscape and mood that I love so much...that and the sense of space and unlimited freedom that the sea and the sky present. It’s a powerful metaphor and I can see how sailors and fishermen get so romantic about it, and while I have no ambition to actually get out there amongst it I can stand there and dream.

In Summer we have these magic evenings where the low rays of the setting sun behind us in the West catch the seagulls flashing white wings from below as they wheel and soar against the darkening Eastern sky and in Winter we watch the moon come trembling up from the sea like a poached egg coming out of the pan...it’s a special place.

Dick Frizzell has worked as an animator, commercial artist, and illustrator and is a leading kiwi visual artist. He is also a judge for the Ocean:Views competition.

Yet it grieves me to know that many people will never see abundant ocean creatures or appreciate them as I have.

So much greed and ignorance has brought the ocean to its knees.  Only 10% of its large predatory fish remain, and locally so many crayfish and snapper have been removed that our northern shallow reefs have been reduced to a barren wasteland covered in spiky kina!

But there is hope.

By visiting a long-established marine reserve we can get a glimpse into the past and see how our reefs looked when everything was in its right place.

We can get healthy oceans back again, at least in some places, with a change in attitude and a collective will to make a difference.

Marine reserves.  

Good idea!

Dr Roger Grace is a well-known marine biologist and professional photographer, and has been an active campaigner for marine conservation, both in New Zealand and internationally.

 

First, it's my family pathway - all of my ancestors travelled here across the ocean.

Second, it's my own pathway. I walk beside it most weekends. It's a rhythm pathway: rhythm of my walking, rhythm of the waves, huge rhythm of the tides. The ocean helps me think. Big horizon.

It's also the pathway for many other creatures. The ocean is a vast habitat for other life-forms – from the beauty of coral through drifting clouds of krill to the astonishment of the sperm whale. That’s why the old Anglo-Saxon poets called the ocean hwæl-weg, the "whale-way" .

Because of all that life, known and unknown, the ocean is also a pathway to mystery. It used to be called the deep, and that’s because its life is larger and richer than anything we can conceive. The ocean is a pathway to a world we hardly begin to understand.

So the ocean is a pathway both to ourselves and to what’s beyond ourselves. It tells us who we are, and sometimes it inspires us to be more than we are.

Bill Manhire is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer. Manhire has won several New Zealand Book Awards, a number of significant fellowships, and he was the 1997/1998 New Zealand Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate.

Since I was very young i have swam, surfed, sailed and snorkled in its calmer reaches and wild surf . I have sat beside it in quiet contemplation and taken long walks with my dogs on the edge of the ocean. Even though I love our mountains, forests, lakes and rivers I have always lived with a view of the sea out my front window. I am appalled at how we treat the ocean as a repository for our rubbish and how we not only decimate the fish populations and mammals that live within it but also we have the temerity to destroy their very habitat. Its my hope that as we discover more of what lies beneath the surface we will come to a more compassionate and respectful attitude to our ocean and its creatures ...

Craig Potton is a noted New Zealand photographer and conservationist.

In the ocean is somewhere I am free, free from weight and time, free from burden, free from obligation.
It separates me from the world I know and cleanses me of complacency.  
It’s always moving and changing, around me, around this land, around the nations… it marries us together.
It holds life, it was where life begun yet with a single breath will destroy and rage.
It is my friend yet my most respected enemy.

Hollie Smith is one of New Zealand's most predominant female musicians. At the 2007 New Zealand Music Awards, Smith won "Best Female Solo Artist", "Breakthrough Artist of the Year", "Best Aotearoa Roots Album", and "Best Producer". In 2010 Smith released a second album which landed at #1 on the NZ charts in the first week and received rave reviews and sell out shows nationwide.

You can find it on a MRI scan of the human brain, a beautiful blue sea cupped by bone and tissue. Here reason and irrational impulses lap back and forth. As a child, I remember crouching above a rock pool crammed with layers of life – a tiny fish worked its way into a finger groove of rock, a crab sank into the mud and waited – while I pondered whether I would be a wrecker or custodian of that world.  I could also see the distant heads, beyond which lay the sea highways. From that direction had come waka and sailing ships and now container ships and flotsam from other worlds. Of all worldly substance, the sea is the binding one. It is the grand schemer and connector. Whenever we look for a metaphor that speaks of the soul we turn to the sea. We marvel at it. We play in it. We eat from it. As much as it sustains us, we need to sustain it.  

Lloyd Jones is a leading kiwi writer. He was the recipient of the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature in 2008. In 2009, Victoria University awarded him an honorary Doctorate in Literature. He is also the Chair of the Bougainville Library Trust and is a judge for the Ocean:Views competition

Whenever I return home after wasting time in other countries, its the sight of that dark aqua moan marking our shores that brings on a little inward sigh and a lightening of my mood. I suppose that I am never aware of just how uptight I have been until I get that little ocean 'fix' and i suddenly feel …alright. 
Although my little-kid years were spent inland, I was in a family of surfers, so trips to the beach were frequent whatever-the-season: and I know that this feeling of 'rightness' with the sea has always been with me, as my innocent seaside instinct was without fail - to 'get my kit off', whatever-the-weather.

"Aww…smell that? the sea." I now exclaim to no-one in particular, when the breeze is prime to bring whiff of the harbor all the way up Queen Street and in my door… and it makes me feel just a little bit more 'right'.

Sarah Larnach is a leading kiwi visual artist, art director, and DJ. She illustrated Ladyhawke's portrait for the Ocean:Views campaign.

The closer, the easier it is to write songs. The sea has even thrown me a couple of songs whole - plump wet fish found glistening on the sand as the tide recedes.

Once, I walked from Nelson to Christchurch with my guitar on my back. Just me, on the road, trying to write. The best part was walking the Kaikoura coast. All day and all night, waves rolled in on my left. Hills on my right echoed the sound back, returning the sea to itself. I finished a song there, which I went on to record later in Dirt Poems. It's just about waves crumbling down but it says what I want it to say. The ocean fixes a lot of things.

Tessa Rain is a New Zealand singer-songwriter best known for her collaboration with Fly My Pretties.

Other than family, my passions and my career [which are often one and the same] revolve mostly around the ocean, or faraway places surrounded by ocean. It started with surf lifesaving at Brighton [near Dunedin], and then moved onto surfing, diving, painting the sea, underwater photography, and sea photography. These last two have been the backbone of my career. Most of the 17 books I've written and photographically-illustrated are about the ocean: penguins, albatrosses, sea lions, seals, whales, dolphins, underwater forests, diving in Antarctica, and so on. I now also run photo workshops and field trips, teaching photographers how to best photograph the ocean.

Many of my happiest, most exciting and most fulfilling days have been at sea - on it, over it, under it, or alongside it on the shore. So have some of my worst days - the ocean is like that. The cover photo on the first edition of the book "The Perfect Storm" [wonderful book, made into a lousy movie] is one of mine. So too the cover of the current edition of Shackleton's "South", another of my stormy sea photos.


Kim Westerskov is a freelance photographer and writer, specializing in ocean wilderness areas. He is also a judge for the Ocean:Views competition.