Sylvia Earle Quotes

People think that the ocean is big enough to sustain anything we throw at it - its hard to get into your head that it's actually finite.

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 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment.

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument may be distant from our shores, but it will help us understand how healthy marine ecosystems work and how we can revive troubled seas closer to home.

I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

Perseverance is my biggest lesson. When I started to get involved in environmental protection some years ago, my people did not take it seriously and they never considered it important. But today, people look at what I do and they truly recognize those efforts, and eventually they join you as "environmental activists" too!

The environmental agenda seems swept under the rug a lot, and environmentalists are looked at as tree-huggers who aren't dealing with the real issues when in fact someone needs to be keeping an eye on how we're treating the planet. When politicians bring up the environment, they're immediately labeled as being anti-business. But for the sake of the planet on which we live, we need to take the environment into account.

Inspired by John Muir's A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, John Davis walks, bikes, and kayaks on a 'voyage of recovery' from the Florida Keys to southeastern Canada. He bears witness not only to wilderness that still sustains bears, panthers, and bobcats but also to the possibilities for connecting further wildways in the eastern United States. His inspiring journey reminds us all that we must rediscover the wildness we still have before we lose it forever.

People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet - we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something.

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

Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.

We have to start listening to nature now.

We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct. And let us go beyond mere salvage to begin the restoration of natural environments, in order to enlarge wild populations and stanch the hemorrhaging of biological wealth. There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.

I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans - there will always be life - but they're getting sicker every year.

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

Only caring individuals can restore the places we inhabit. The 'simple act of planting a tree' not only restores the places we live, but makes us whole and powerful again.

Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet.

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

Individuals of all ages can make an important difference in the overall health of our ocean by the actions they take every day. Simple things like picking up trash on the beach, recycling and conserving water can have a big impact on the health of our ocean.

We humans still have a long way to go with learning to live harmoniously with our environment and its wildlife.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change?

If you can unify the public mind saving an iconic species like the tiger, like they did with the panda, that means you have to protect their habitat and everything that they hunt. And that means saving massive, thousands of acres for them to be able to roam and breed. So it's more of a land effort.

The ocean is not just blank blue space but rather the habitat for amazing wildlife, and we have to take care how we use it. If we want to keep having the goods and services it provides, we have to treat it more carefully in terms of fishing and dumping.

I think the environmental movement is the biggest people's movement in the world. Unfortunately, our governments and corporations haven't responded accordingly to protect our planet's natural resources.