98 Quotes by Sylvia A. Earle

Our near and distant predecessors might be forgiven for exterminating the last woolly mammoth, the ultimate dodo, the final sea cow, and the last living monk seal for lack of understanding the consequences of their actions. But who will forgive us if we fail to learn from past and present experiences, to forge new values, new relationships, a new level of respect for the natural systems that keep us alive?

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.

Just as we have the power to harm the ocean, we have the power to put in place policies and modify our own behavior in ways that would be an insurance policy for the future of the sea, for the creatures there, and for us, protecting special critical areas in the ocean.

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.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

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.

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

Currently, up to 20 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions are being caused by deforestation in tropical Brazil and Indonesia, making those countries two of the highest carbon emitters in the world. It is estimated that halting forest destruction would save the same amount of carbon over the next century as stopping all fossil-fuel emissions for ten years.

I am not in any hurry to grow up.