Sylvia Earle Quotes

We need to do a better job of keeping oceans healthy.

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

The very survival of the human species depends upon the maintenance of an ocean clean and alive.... The ocean is our planet's life belt.

The simple fact that half of the oxygen that we breathe is produced by the oceans should be reason enough to mobilize around the issue of better protecting our oceans.

As an explorer, I know firsthand there are many places in the ocean so full of life that they should be protected. Coral reefs and mangrove coastlines are stressed already by climate change and ocean acidification, and poor planning will just make their plight worse.

I like to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to a cause so that I have more impact. My goal is to shed light on the beauty of the ocean and how important it is for our planet.

If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.

Since oceans are the life support system of our planet, regulating the climate, providing most of our oxygen and feeding over a billion people, what's bad for oceans is bad for us - very bad.

The oceans are more or less in disrepair. Long Beach really is making an effort to acknowledge this, and that's a great place to start. I'm trying to spread at least the knowledge that it's never too early to take care of our oceans and our environment.

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.

A healthy ocean is vital to our economy and well-being. We need clean and healthy oceans to sustain tourism and fisheries.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

I could cut my leg of; I could cut my arm off. I could gouge my eye out - I'd still probably survive, but not very well, and that's what we're doing to the ocean. It's the life support system of this planet. We've been dumping in it, we've been polluting it, we've been destroying it for decades, and we're essentially maiming ourselves.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to study the ocean before we destroy it.

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.

Oceans are one of the most important things in the world now and that is a national security threat of the United States of America, to be honest with you. That is why seeing the habitat destroyed is so short-sighted by us.

Most people can't see the connection between their own lives and the oceans.

I want to do everything I can in my own life to protect and preserve the ocean.

We could truly make our oceans clean again.

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

We know that when we protect our oceans we're protecting our future.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

The seas need their own Kyoto Protocol.

Over the years, I have seen the power of the oceans to excite, feed, and sustain people. I have also seen them undergo a growing onslaught of attacks, from destructive fishing practices to rising acidification.

Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.