Sylvia Earle Quotes

We've got to somehow stabilize our connection to nature so that in 50 years from now, 500 years, 5,000 years from now there will still be a wild system and respect for what it takes to sustain us.

There is an enormous amount to be learned about the sea; like most wildernesses, it has great potential.

The next 10 years could be the most important in the next 10,000.

With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.

We have the capacity to alter the nature of nature. No, we don't have just the capacity - we are altering the nature of nature, the natural systems that cause the planet to function in our favor.

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.

Our past, our present, and whatever remains of our future, absolutely depend on what we do now.

Throughout all of human history we have consumed the natural world. All creatures do. Birds do. Fish do. Earthworms do. We consume the natural world as a source of our survival. But no creature has ever consumed at the scale that humans have, and now there are seven billion of us. I think the good news is that a large percentage of those seven billion minds can work to make better decisions.

The opportunity that is unique [to our] time is what inspires me to do everything I can to move things forward. This is the first time that we have the capacity to understand our place in the greater scheme of things to the extent that we do.

We're still under the weight of this impression that the ocean is too big to fail, that the planet is too big to fail.

We must protect our ocean as if our lives depend upon it, because they do.

No creature on Earth ever has organized themselves in ways that we have, with the capacity to alter the nature of nature the way we have.

There is this sweet spot in time when we have an opportunity to stop killing sharks and tunas and swordfish and other wildlife in the sea before it's too late.

We humans have this idea that the ocean is so big, so vast, so resilient that it doesn't matter what we do to it. That may have been true 1,000 years ago. But in the last 100, especially the last 50 years, we have destroyed the assets that make our lives possible.

There's something missing about how we're informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.

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.

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.

You should know what is taken out of the ecosystem in order to give you a moment's sustenance.

We woke up some years ago about the consequences of ozone depletion, the hole in the atmosphere. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't smell it. But now we do regard that as a key issue. It's a scientific finding.

Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.

The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. 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.

Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.

We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called Planet Earth. As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of things, and begin to understand how the system works, we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly, to show some respect for this inheritance that goes back 4.6 billion years.

Ironically the very energy, the very basis of how we know what we know, has been reliant on having an energy source [necessary] to build rockets to go to the moon and Mars, to support airplanes that fly, and satellites to give us our communication.

I've always said, 'Underwater or on top, men and women are compatible.'

It isn't too late to shift from the swift, sharp decline of ocean systems in recent decades to an era of steady recovery. There is time, and there is a growing awareness, which is the best way to counter indifference. People who know might care.

Childcare is a huge issue for young women whose work may require them to leave their families for weeks at a time.

Santa Monica Bay is less polluted today than when I first moved to the area in the 1970s, because actions have been taken to avoid putting some of the noxious materials into the sea. I think people are more aware than they once were, the air is cleaner, water generally is, in spite of the fact that there are more people.

If Darwin could see what we now see, what we now know about the ocean, about the atmosphere, about the nature of life, as we now understand it, about the importance of microbes - I think he would just beam with joy that many of the thoughts and the glimpses of the majesty of life on Earth that he had during his life, now magnified many times over.

We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.

The ocean is our life support system. No blue, no green. It's really a miracle that we have got a place that works in our favor.

I hope that someday we will find evidence that there is intelligent life among humans on this planet.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

We are taking way more out of the ocean than the ocean can replenish.

The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.

When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots.

I actually love diving at night; you see a lot of fish then that you don't see in the daytime.

Protecting vital sources of renewal - unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens - will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.

It has taken these many hundreds of millions of years to fine-tune the Earth to a point where it is suitable for the likes of us.

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.

'Green' issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.

The ocean governs the climate and the weather, it is taking care of the temperature and it is shaping the chemistry of our planet.

We want to believe that we can continue doing what we've done for the past thousand years and not worry about the consequences coming back to us.

We don't have to be that greedy generation that just continued to take down the underpinnings of what makes the planet work in our favor.

We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

Ocean acidification - the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid - 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.

Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.

Everybody can make choices that will make peace with the natural world.