Some 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.
SYLVIA EARLEThere is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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Nearly all of the major kinds of life, divisions of life, phyla of animals, occur in the sea. Only about half of them can make it to land or freshwater.
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The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.
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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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With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea.
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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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You don’t stand around arguing about who’s responsible, or who’s going to pay.
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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.
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They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.
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As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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We have taken the manatees out of the areas in the Caribbean and really elsewhere in the world, and this disruption to the system makes such systems vulnerable to changes as they come by, whether it’s in terms of disease or terms or global warming for that matter.
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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.
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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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Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
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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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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.
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I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.
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The ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn’t frightening, it was more exhilarating.
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Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.
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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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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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If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
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There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
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You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
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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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