Sylvia Earle Quotes

I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.

Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh.

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

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

Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.

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.

There is no need for an end to fish, or to fishing for that matter. But there is an urgent need for governments to free themselves from the fishing-industrial complex and its Ponzi scheme, to stop subsidizing the fishing-industrial complex and awarding it fishing rights, when it should in fact pay for the privilege to fish.

Fish banks are areas we set aside without fishing, reserves where we allow marine life to come back.

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

European fisheries are a disaster. The American fisheries are well-kept.

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.

There are a number of things everyone can do to help protect whales.

The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.

While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people - even those who profess great environmental consciousness - continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice.

Sustainable fishing is a fraud. It's a marketing term that really means 'business as usual.'

It's harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done.

'Cod' was a great story. It let me talk about the environment without putting people to sleep.

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.

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 fact that we're catching more fish per person than we've ever done before doesn't mean that there are not particular places where we've managed fisheries badly.

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

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.

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