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.
SYLVIA EARLEEvery 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.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
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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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I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.
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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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I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.
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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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A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.
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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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Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative – don’t wait for someone else to ask you to act.
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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.
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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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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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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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The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder.
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Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.
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In terms of personal choices, let’s all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.
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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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If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.
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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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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.
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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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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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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 -
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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We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.
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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.
SYLVIA EARLE