Sylvia Earle Quotes

Author Image

Sylvia Earle

Profession : Scientist

Birth : August 30, 1935

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.

Sylvia Earle

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

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they've spent time in and around the ocean, and they've personally seen the beauty, the fragility, and even the degradation of our planet's blue heart.

Sylvia Earle

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

Sylvia Earle

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 Earle

When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

I personally have stopped eating seafood.

Sylvia Earle

I am not in any hurry to grow up.

Sylvia Earle

All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class - which wasn't such a bad deal.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

For heaven's sake, when you see the enemy attacking, you pick up the pitchfork, and you enlist everybody you see. You don't stand around arguing about who's responsible, or who's going to pay.

Sylvia Earle

I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.

Sylvia Earle

In terms of personal choices, let's all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.

Sylvia Earle

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle

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.

Sylvia Earle