There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.
SYLVIA EARLEAny 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.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
-
-
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
SYLVIA EARLE -
My mother was known as the ‘bird lady’ of the neighborhood.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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 -
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Protecting vital sources of renewal – unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens – will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.
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 -
The sudden release of five million barrels of oil, enormous quantities of methane and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into an already greatly stressed Gulf of Mexico will permanently alter the nature of the area.
SYLVIA EARLE -
We have taken the manatees out of the areas in the Caribbean and really elsewhere in the world, and this disruption to the system makes such systems vulnerable to changes as they come by, whether it’s in terms of disease or terms or global warming for that matter.
SYLVIA EARLE -
What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
I am not in any hurry to grow up.
SYLVIA EARLE -
If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
The fragility, and even the degradation of our planet’s blue heart.
SYLVIA EARLE