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 EARLEBottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.
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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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As if the ocean somehow doesn’t matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean.
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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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Is a slow but accelerating impact with consequences that will greatly overshadow all the oil spills put together. The warming trend that is CO2-related will overshadow all the oil spills that have ever occurred put together.
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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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America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
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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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Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.
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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.
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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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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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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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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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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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And there’s no question that it is a factor, but it’s preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
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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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Everyone has power. But it doesn’t help if you don’t use it.
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Health to the ocean means health for us.
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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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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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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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We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.
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The concept of ‘peak oil’ has penetrated the hearts and minds of people concerned about energy for the future. ‘Peak fish’ occurred around the end of the 1980s.
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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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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.
SYLVIA EARLE