Quotes from Sylvia A. Earle

To succeed as a predator, simple math explains that it is vital that the consumers do not outnumber the consumees. The older and larger the consumer, the greater the investment of energy, pound for pound. It takes a lot of seeds and grass to make enough mice and rabbits to make a wolf; a lot of little plants to make sufficient numbers of small fish to make a shark. As it turns out, it takes a lot of everything to power human societies.

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.

The single non-negotiable thing life requires is water.

Knowing is the key to caring, and with caring there is hope that people will be motivated to take positive actions. They might not care even if they know, but they can't care if they are unaware.

So, should we race to see how quickly we can consume the last tuna, swordfish, and grouper? Or race to see what can be done to protect what remains? For now, there is still a choice.

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?

The bottom line answer to the question about why biodiversity matters is fairly simple: The rest of the living world can get along without us, but we can't get along without them.

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.

quoted Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, once accused of being an "adventurer." His response was, "An adventure is what happens when exploration goes wrong.

Thanks to generations of curious, daring, intrepid explorers of the past, we may know enough, soon enough, to chart safe passage for ourselves far into the future.

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. Early

Let's talk trash…. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Even smaller pieces are engulfed by inch-long krill; ant-size copepods; and filter-feeding salps, clams, oysters, and mussels. Large plankton feeders such as whale sharks and manta rays swallow gallons of water at a time, plastic and all. Whether at the large, medium, small, or ultra-small scale, ingested plastic lumps, clumps, pellets, or microscopic mites kill by physically obstructing, choking, clogging, or otherwise stopping up the passage of food.

astrophysicist Christopher McKay puts it: "The single non-negotiable thing life requires is water.

One kind of blue-green bacteria, Prochlorococcus, is so abundant—about 100 octillion (1 octillion = 1027) are alive at any given moment—that it alone is responsible for about 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Put another way, this nearly invisible form of life generates the oxygen in one of every five breaths you take, no matter where on the planet you live.

Species have been disappearing from ocean ecosystems and this trend has recently been accelerating…. If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime—by 2048." But, he continued, "The good news is that it is not too late to turn things around.

A report from the National Academy of Sciences published five years later reported that over 6 billion kilograms (14 billion pounds) of garbage were deliberately dumped into the sea every year.

The problem is the magnitude of synthetic materials that are used briefly, then thrown away for eternity, thereby permanently changing the nature of the world.

But water alone does not generate oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, or yield the simple sugars that are the basis of food production powering most of life on Earth. By itself, water does not produce the dimethyl sulfide molecules around which water gathers to form vapor that becomes clouds that in turn become rain, sleet, and snow. Microscopic photosynthetic organisms in the sea do all of these things and much more.

But there's another, much darker, way in which Sylvia Earle helps us understand the size of the ocean. And that's to point out that, vast as it is, it's not so big that we can't screw it up.