The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.
SYLVIA EARLEIf you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
More Sylvia Earle Quotes
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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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We have taken the manatees out of the areas in the Caribbean and really elsewhere in the world, and this disruption to the system makes such systems vulnerable to changes as they come by, whether it’s in terms of disease or terms or global warming for that matter.
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The sudden release of five million barrels of oil, enormous quantities of methane and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into an already greatly stressed Gulf of Mexico will permanently alter the nature of the area.
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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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We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
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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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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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Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world.
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I am not in any hurry to grow up.
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You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks.
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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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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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Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.
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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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Ocean acidification – the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid.
SYLVIA EARLE