We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.
SYLVIA EARLEWe did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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No water, no life. No blue, no green.
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America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
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Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.
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Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive – and thrive. ‘Harsh’ to us is ‘home’ for them.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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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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I’m not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.
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We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.
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I personally have stopped eating seafood.
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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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In terms of personal choices, let’s all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.
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When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.
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Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher – and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
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It’s a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments.
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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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Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.
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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.
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They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.
SYLVIA EARLE