I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.
SYLVIA EARLEI’ve always said, ‘Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.’
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
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A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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My first encounter with the ocean was on the Jersey Shore when I was three years old and I got knocked over by a wave.
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There are some who would like to see the oil rigs removed right down to the ground once their job is done, and there are others, and I count myself among them, who think that once they are in place they begin to be adopted by life in the ocean as a habitat.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea.
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When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.
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It’s mainly the high-end luxury market now that drives much of the fishing in the sea. It’s not feeding the starving millions. It’s feeding a luxury market.
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Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.
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The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it.
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For heaven’s sake, when you see the enemy attacking, you pick up the pitchfork, and you enlist everybody you see.
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Everyone has power. But it doesn’t help if you don’t use it.
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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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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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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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Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.
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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.
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I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.
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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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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.
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I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They’re very efficient.
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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.
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There’s something missing about how we’re informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.
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I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE