Sylvia Earle Quotes

There are now more than 4,000 places in the sea around the world that have some kind of protection. The bad news: You have to look hard to find them. What you find instead is destructive fishing, mining, gas and oil exploration.

If somebody dumps something noxious in my back yard, the dumper is the last one I would call on to repair the damage.

The value of sharks' lives is now widely understood to be more important than their value as products. And when you have sharks in an area, it's a sign of good health. They're top predators, which means they feed on old, sick, and slower fish, keeping an entire population healthy.

We couldn't go to the moon on whale oil. We don't have the capacity yet to consider doing such things as harnessing current sunlight. We're burning ancient sunlight in order to get us to where we now are. But it's costly.

What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.

The climate has been changing. Of course it [has]. Evidence throughout history, [which] we can assess, especially during human history, shows there have been ups and downs. But the last ten thousand years have been relatively stable compared to now.

Knowledge is the key to making a difference.

There are a lot of smart creatures out there. Dolphins, elephants, and whales are smart. And there are some really smart birds. I know some really intelligent fish. But they cannot know what humans know and are incapable of inflicting as much damage.

Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.

That attitude of arrogance, that attitude of "It's all about me. It's all about what I can get out of life now" - well, I'm personally driven by wanting to get out of my life the best I can achieve as a gift for those who come after me.

With knowing comes caring.

Never before have we known what we know.

Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It's agriculture. It's golf courses. It's domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.

I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.

There's plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.

Like a shipwreck or a jetty, almost anything that forms a structure in the ocean, whether it is natural or artificial over time, collects life.

Ignorance is the biggest problem of all for the ocean - and for many other things as well.

We have to look in the mirror first. What are we doing? How can we make a change? It always starts with looking in the mirror. Every individual can. Every individual can make a difference either by proactively doing something positive or by doing nothing. That's a decision, too.

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.

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.

It's mainly the high-end luxury market now that drives much of the fishing in the sea. It's not feeding the starving millions. It's feeding a luxury market.

Even our rules and regulations, our laws, our policies, favor the destructive nature of taking too much from the ocean and using techniques that are horribly destructive. We know they don't work. We know it's not sustainable.

My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

Give the ocean a break. Give yourself a break.

The very energy sources that have gotten us to where we are now are also, if we continue doing what we're doing, a shortcut to the end of all that we hold near and dear.

The most important part is to take on the challenge of protecting the ocean as if your life depends on it - because it does.

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.

I want to get out in the water. I want to see fish, real fish, not fish in a laboratory.

When you are a child you learn your alphabet, your numbers, but increasingly, we must learn from the earliest stages that the highest priority has to be to maintain the world as a safe place for humankind.

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways.

Everyone has power. But it doesn't help if you don't use it.

I am not in any hurry to grow up.

I've spent thousands of hours under water. And even in the deepest dive I have ever made, 2.5 miles (about 4 kilometers) down, I saw trash and other tangible evidence of our presence.

Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks.

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.

If Darwin could get into a submarine and see what I've seen, thousand of feet beneath the ocean, I am just confident that he would be inspired to sit down and start writing all over again.

It's a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. 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. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

My first breath was just...it just seemed impossible that you could actually breathe underwater. I knew in my mind it was possible, but actually experiencing it was such a gulp of joy and I feel it every time I go under the ocean. I love doing it, to be able to feel weightless, to spin on one finger, to do somersaults, to be like a graceful ballerina - even with a huge tank on your back you can do the most extraordinary things.

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. Health to the ocean means health for us.

Globally sharks have been killed for their fins, for their cartilage, for their livers, for their meat. But mostly what has driven some species of sharks to near extinction - including the hammerhead shark - is the new luxury taste for shark fin soup.

We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it's like going home.

We want to think of ourselves as truly special creatures that are unique in the universe and, well, we are. And we have that capacity to wonder, to question, and to see ourselves in the context of all of life that has preceded the present time, and all that will go off far into the future, one way or another.

What we put into the atmosphere in terms of burning fuel is unprecedented.

If I seem like a radical it's because I have seen things that others have not.

If we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable, it's primarily because of the new level of communication. It used to be, 'What you don't have in your mind, you have on your shelf.' But now we have the Web.