I’ve had the joy of spending thousands of hours under the sea. I wish I could take people along to see what I see, and to know what I know.
SYLVIA EARLETake away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.
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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 personally have stopped eating seafood.
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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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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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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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We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
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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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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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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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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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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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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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Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they’ve spent time in and around the ocean, and they’ve personally seen the beauty.
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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.
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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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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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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 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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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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You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
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There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.
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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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A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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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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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.
SYLVIA EARLE