Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative – don’t wait for someone else to ask you to act.
SYLVIA EARLEAs 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.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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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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A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you’ll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment.
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Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
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Every fish fertilizes the water in a way that generates the plankton that ultimately leads back into the food chain, but also yields oxygen, grabs carbon – it’s a part of what makes the ocean function and what makes the planet function.
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I love music of all kinds, but there’s no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too.
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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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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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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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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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Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away.
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I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind.
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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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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.
SYLVIA EARLE