I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.
SYLVIA EARLEMy parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder.
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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.
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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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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?
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If we could magically transport ourselves back to the young Earth, when it was only a billion years old or two billion years old or three billion years old or four billion years old.
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No water, no life. No blue, no green.
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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.
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Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
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The fragility, and even the degradation of our planet’s blue heart.
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There are some who would like to see the oil rigs removed right down to the ground once their job is done, and there are others, and I count myself among them, who think that once they are in place they begin to be adopted by life in the ocean as a habitat.
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I’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.
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I’ve always said, ‘Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.’
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I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
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I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind.
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What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
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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.
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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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My mother was known as the ‘bird lady’ of the neighborhood.
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Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.
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I’ve had the joy of spending thousands of hours under the sea. I wish I could take people along to see what I see, and to know what I know.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE