Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.
SYLVIA EARLEThe sudden release of five million barrels of oil, enormous quantities of methane and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into an already greatly stressed Gulf of Mexico will permanently alter the nature of the area.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents.
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That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.
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Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.
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Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.
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You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
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We wouldn’t be able to survive. We would have a hard time surviving if we were transported to the time when dinosaurs were around.
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No water, no life. No blue, no green.
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Large areas of the Gulf have escaped being scraped by trawls, crushed by more than 40,000 miles of pipelines, or displaced by one of 50,000 oil and gas wells drilled since the middle of the 20th century. Some places have been deliberately protected.
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The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.
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When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
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I actually love diving at night; you see a lot of fish then that you don’t see in the daytime.
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All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class – which wasn’t such a bad deal.
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My mother was known as the ‘bird lady’ of the neighborhood.
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On a sea floor that looks like a sandy mud bottom, that at first glance might appear to be sand and mud, when you look closely and sit there as I do for a while and just wait, all sorts of creatures show themselves, with little heads popping out of the sand. It is a metropolis.
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The concept of ‘peak oil’ has penetrated the hearts and minds of people concerned about energy for the future. ‘Peak fish’ occurred around the end of the 1980s.
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By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.
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Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean.
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To lose it means that we will dismember the vital systems that make the Arctic work. It’s not just a cost to the people who live there. It’s a cost to all people everywhere.
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Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they’ve spent time in and around the ocean, and they’ve personally seen the beauty.
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It’s akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn’t do this on land, so why do it in the oceans?
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Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
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We did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.
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People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.
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Green’ issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.
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Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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