The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it.
SYLVIA EARLEIf somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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There’s something missing about how we’re informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.
SYLVIA EARLE -
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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Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe.
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Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.
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Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.
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Large areas of the Gulf have escaped being scraped by trawls, crushed by more than 40,000 miles of pipelines, or displaced by one of 50,000 oil and gas wells drilled since the middle of the 20th century. Some places have been deliberately protected.
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.
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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.
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When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.
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You don’t stand around arguing about who’s responsible, or who’s going to pay.
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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.
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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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Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.
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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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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 -
Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher – and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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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.
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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 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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.
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I’ve always said, ‘Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.’
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 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.
SYLVIA EARLE -
The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents.
SYLVIA EARLE -
Meat reared on land matures relatively quickly, and it takes only a few pounds of plants to produce a pound of meat.
SYLVIA EARLE