Sylvia Earle Quotes

I am passionate about what is going on with the oceans, mainly because we are for some idiotic reason, really screwing it up. I mean, we're really killing the ocean. It's like putting out the sun. Without it, there is no us.

Our oceans have been the victims of a giant Ponzi scheme, waged with Bernie Madoff-like callousness by the world's fisheries.

Even our rules and regulations, our laws, our policies, favor the destructive nature of taking too much from the ocean and using techniques that are horribly destructive. We know they don't work. We know it's not sustainable.

By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.

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?

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

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.

We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.

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

If we don't preserve the oceans from nitrate runoff and plastic and chemicals, and if we don't preserve it from acidification, and if we don't preserve it from grotesque overfishing - too much money chasing too few fish - we're going to have the most massive ecosystem on the planet in peril.

We are taking way more out of the ocean than the ocean can replenish.

To the naked eye, our oceans are beautiful. But scientists tell us that all of the world's fisheries will collapse by 2048, unless we change how we manage them. Help protect our oceans so the next generation can also enjoy their bounty.

In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.

We are literally eating the oceans alive and there are simply not enough fish to continue to feed an ever expanding population of humanity.

If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one.

If we don't save the oceans, if we don't do something about what we're doing to the oceans, as well as the planet at large, we're going to be really sorry.

There are more fish taken out of a stream than ever were in it.

Since I began exploring the ocean in the 1950s, 90 percent of the big fish have been stripped away. Tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod, halibut, you name it, the numbers have just collapsed. Also, about half of the coral reefs are gone, globally, from where they were just a few decades ago.

Commercial fishermen are the greediest, stupidest people on earth.

When the fish price is too low, the fishermen starve.

Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to believe in the "inexhaustible resources of the oceans," they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction.

The sea is a place where every day, half the population eats the other half.

Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest forms of life to regain their dominance.

This is part of what's driving me, is this feeling like there's so much yet to be discovered in the oceans, and we're destroying it before we even know what's in it.

The facts are clear. Our oceans are a mess.