Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
SYLVIA EARLEYou don’t stand around arguing about who’s responsible, or who’s going to pay.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
-
-
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
And there’s no question that it is a factor, but it’s preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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?
SYLVIA EARLE -
They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.
SYLVIA EARLE -
There’s no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.
SYLVIA EARLE -
On 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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.
SYLVIA EARLE -
I’ve always said, ‘Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.’
SYLVIA EARLE -
Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.
SYLVIA EARLE -
We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.
SYLVIA EARLE -
I’m friends with James Cameron. We’ve spent time together over the years because he is a diver and explorer and in his heart of hearts a biologist. We run into each other at scientific conferences.
SYLVIA EARLE