We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.
SYLVIA EARLEThe ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn’t frightening, it was more exhilarating.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.
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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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I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They’re very efficient.
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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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My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
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Any astronaut can tell you you’ve got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE