You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
SYLVIA EARLEOn 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.
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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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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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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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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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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In terms of personal choices, let’s all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.
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I personally have stopped eating seafood.
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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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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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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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We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.
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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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Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.
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The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.
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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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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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America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
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Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe.
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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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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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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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Everyone has power. But it doesn’t help if you don’t use it.
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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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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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By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE