Quotes from Sylvia Earle

Far and away the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance. It's a lack of understanding that what we put in, what we take out matters—not just to the ocean, but matters to us. The ocean cannot be regarded as the planet's ultimate dumpster or the ultimate place to get free food.

I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They're very efficient. They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.

Santa Monica Bay is less polluted today than when I first moved to the area in the 1970s, because actions have been taken to avoid putting some of the noxious materials into the sea. I think people are more aware than they once were, the air is cleaner, water generally is, in spite of the fact that there are more people.

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

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

Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.

I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.

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.

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It's akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn't do this on land, so why do it in the oceans?

My mother was known as the 'bird lady' of the neighborhood. Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.

I personally have stopped eating seafood.

Health to the ocean means health for us.

Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.

There are some who would like to see the oil rigs removed right down to the ground once their job is done, and there are others, and I count myself among them, who think that once they are in place they begin to be adopted by life in the ocean as a habitat.

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

People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.

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

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.

There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet - as if the ocean somehow doesn't matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean.

We don't have to be that greedy generation that just continued to take down the underpinnings of what makes the planet work in our favor.

We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.

You should ask where your food is coming from.

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