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.
SYLVIA EARLEI’m not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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And there’s no question that it is a factor, but it’s preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
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The ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn’t frightening, it was more exhilarating.
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I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.
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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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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.
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It’s a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments.
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Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.
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Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat.
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People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.
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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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My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
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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.
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What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
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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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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.
SYLVIA EARLE