Sylvia Earle Quotes

We've built, drilled, and shipped indiscriminately across our oceans, with little consideration for the natural environment that is critical to the health of many of our other ocean uses, like food and recreation.

Marine scientists predict that by 2050 there will be no more large fish left in the ocean if we don't change our relationship with the sea.

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

Several groups have information evaluating seafood sustainability. I wrote the first such guide, and seafood pocket-guides and detailed evaluations of different seafoods are available for download from the group I founded, Blue Ocean Institute.

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.

80 percent of our global fish stocks are fully exploited, overly exploited or have collapsed. Two billion people rely on the oceans for their primary source of protein.

I personally have stopped eating seafood.

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.

I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now.

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.

It’s all in there. We have harpooned every whale in the ocean.

Until fishing is properly regulated and contained, we should withdraw our consent. Save your plastic bags by all means, but if you really want to make a difference, stop eating fish.

Believe me, I did not come to London to cook farmed fish. All my fish are wild.

Mackerel is sustainable and healthy.

Marine protected areas, and particularly no-take zones, are very effective in allowing regeneration of fish stocks.

Eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee.

I would just like my children to be able to eat fish when they grow up. Now, I don't think there's anything controversial about that.

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.

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.

There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.

Since the majority of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean, not to mention much of the world's protein, it is not an exaggeration to say that when our oceans' health declines, our very survival is at risk.

Because the Asian market is so omnivorous, it affects all the shark populations up and down the Central and South American coast, and to a certain extent the East Coast of the United States as well.

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.

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.