As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything.
SYLVIA EARLEEveryone has power. But it doesn’t help if you don’t use it.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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I love music of all kinds, but there’s no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too.
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They have curiosity. ‘Who, what, where, why, when, and how!’ They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old.
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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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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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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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That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.
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A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They’re very efficient.
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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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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.
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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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When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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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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For heaven’s sake, when you see the enemy attacking, you pick up the pitchfork, and you enlist everybody you see.
SYLVIA EARLE