If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.
SYLVIA EARLEOur 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.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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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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With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea.
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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.
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Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica.
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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 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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Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.
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They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.
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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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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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Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.
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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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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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If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
SYLVIA EARLE