The role of the sea in culture has been important for centuries, as people experience the sea in contradictory ways: as powerful but serene, beautiful but dangerous. Human responses to the sea can be
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1830)
An Assyrian relief from the reign of Sennacherib, Nineveh, c. 700 BC showing fish and a crab swimming around a bireme.
The Isonade as depicted in Takehara Shunsen's Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, 1841
Nereid riding a sea-bull (2nd century BC)