The Arctic is an ocean. The southern pole is a continent surrounded by ocean. The North Pole is an ocean, or northern waters. It’s an ocean surrounded by land, basically.
SYLVIA EARLETo 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.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive – and thrive. ‘Harsh’ to us is ‘home’ for them.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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.
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I’ve always said, ‘Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.’
SYLVIA EARLE -
Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Green’ issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.
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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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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 -
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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We wouldn’t be able to survive. We would have a hard time surviving if we were transported to the time when dinosaurs were around.
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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.
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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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Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away.
SYLVIA EARLE






