I actually love diving at night; you see a lot of fish then that you don’t see in the daytime.
SYLVIA EARLESome experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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I’m friends with James Cameron. We’ve spent time together over the years because he is a diver and explorer and in his heart of hearts a biologist. We run into each other at scientific conferences.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Just as we have the power to harm the ocean, we have the power to put in place policies and modify our own behavior in ways that would be an insurance policy for the future of the sea, for the creatures there, and for us, protecting special critical areas in the ocean.
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The Arctic is an ocean. The southern pole is a continent surrounded by ocean. The North Pole is an ocean, or northern waters. It’s an ocean surrounded by land, basically.
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I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.
SYLVIA EARLE -
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
The 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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
As if the ocean somehow doesn’t matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.
SYLVIA EARLE -
When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.
SYLVIA EARLE -
A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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I would love to slip into the skin of a fish and know what it’s like to be one. They have senses that I can only dream about.
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I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
SYLVIA EARLE






