Sylvia Earle Quotes

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

The oceans deserve our respect and care, but you have to know something before you can care about it.

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

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

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.

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

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

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

If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one.

I suggest to everyone: Look in the mirror. Ask yourself: Who are you? What are your talents? Use them, and do what you love.

Great attention gets paid to rainforests because of the diversity of life there. Diversity in the oceans is even greater.

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.

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

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.

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

Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.

We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth.

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

With care and protection, with safe havens in the ocean, there is still a good chance that we can turn things around.

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

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

We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.

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.

We still have 10 percent of the sharks. We still have half of the coral reefs. However, if we wait another 50 years, opportunities might well be gone.

Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.

I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.

Many of us ask what can I, as one person, do, but history shows us that everything good and bad starts because somebody does something or does not do something.

Scientists never stop asking. They're little kids who never grew up.

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

You don't have to touch the ocean for the ocean to touch you

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

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.

The oxygen cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle, the water cycle - all of these are linked to the existence of life in the sea.

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.

If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.

We have the power to abstain from destructive behavior.

The ocean seemed like a sea of Eden. But now we are facing paradise lost.

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

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.

Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.

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

Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

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

The Earth is a unique system in the universe, the only planet we know of that's hospitable for humankind.

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.

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

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

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.