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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.

-Sylvia Earle

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People Ask: Why Should

Sylvia Earle

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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.

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There Is This Sweet Spot In Time When We Have An Opportunity To Stop Killing Sharks And Tunas And Swordfish And Other Wildlife In The Sea Before It's Too Late.

Photosynthetic Organisms In The Sea Yield Most Of The Oxygen In The Atmosphere, Take Up And Store Vast Amounts Of Carbon Dioxide, Shape Planetary Chemistry, And Hold The Planet Steady.

The Very Energy Sources That Have Gotten Us To Where We Are Now Are Also, If We Continue Doing What We're Doing, A Shortcut To The End Of All That We Hold Near And Dear.

The Ocean Governs The Climate And The Weather, It Is Taking Care Of The Temperature And It Is Shaping The Chemistry Of Our Planet.

The Ocean Is Dying, And We Have No Place To Escape To If This Experiment Doesn't Go In Our Favor.

I've Always Said, 'underwater Or On Top, Men And Women Are Compatible.'

Fish From All Over The World, From Deep In The Sea, Wind Up In Countries From Germany To Japan. That Is Just Crazy.

The Concept Of 'peak Oil' Has Penetrated The Hearts And Minds Of People Concerned About Energy For The Future. 'peak Fish' Occurred Around The End Of The 1980s.

The Climate Has Been Changing. Of Course It [has]. Evidence Throughout History, [which] We Can Assess, Especially During Human History, Shows There Have Been Ups And Downs. But The Last Ten Thousand Years Have Been Relatively Stable Compared To Now.

Look At A Child And Realize That Their Future Is In Your Hands. It's Not Just Those Who Will Be Here Fifty Years From Now. The Decisions We Make In The Next Ten Years Will Shape The Next 10,000 Years.

The Earth Is A Unique System In The Universe, The Only Planet We Know Of That's Hospitable For Humankind.

I Find The Lure Of The Unknown Irresistible.

Nearly All Of The Major Kinds Of Life, Divisions Of Life, Phyla Of Animals, Occur In The Sea. Only About Half Of Them Can Make It To Land Or Freshwater.

Ironically The Very Energy, The Very Basis Of How We Know What We Know, Has Been Reliant On Having An Energy Source [necessary] To Build Rockets To Go To The Moon And Mars, To Support Airplanes That Fly, And Satellites To Give Us Our Communication.

We Are All Together In This, We Are All Together In This Single Living Ecosystem Called Planet Earth. As We Learn How We Fit Into The Greater Scheme Of Things, And Begin To Understand How The System Works, We Can Plan Ahead, We Can Use The Resources Responsibly, To Show Some Respect For This Inheritance That Goes Back 4.6 Billion Years.

When I Was 12, We Moved From New Jersey To Florida. The Gulf Of Mexico Was Literally My Backyard. Every Day, I Could See The Ocean. At Low Tide I Went Out And Played In Seagrass Meadows That Used To Come Right Up To The Shore, Filled With Tiny Seahorses, Pipefish And Soft Corals. There Was So Much Life! But Then I Witnessed The Change, The Loss Of The Shoreline, The Loss Of The Mangrove Trees, The Loss Of The Seagrass Meadows. Shallow Bay Areas Were Turned Into Parking Lots.

Our Job Is To Keep What Is Working Intact And Not Destroy What We Have Got.

We Still Have 10 Percent Of The Sharks. We Still Have Half Of The Coral Reefs. However, If We Wait Another 50 Years, Opportunities Might Well Be Gone.

That Attitude Of Arrogance, That Attitude Of "it's All About Me. It's All About What I Can Get Out Of Life Now" - Well, I'm Personally Driven By Wanting To Get Out Of My Life The Best I Can Achieve As A Gift For Those Who Come After Me.

If I Seem Like A Radical It's Because I Have Seen Things That Others Have Not.

The Living Ocean Drives Planetary Chemistry, Governs Climate And Weather, And Otherwise Provides The Cornerstone Of The Life-support System For All Creatures On Our Planet, From Deep-sea Starfish To Desert Sagebrush. That's Why The Ocean Matters. If The Sea Is Sick, We'll Feel It. If It Dies, We Die. Our Future And The State Of The Oceans Are One.

Support Systems

I Personally Have Stopped Eating Seafood.

Our Past, Our Present, And Whatever Remains Of Our Future, Absolutely Depend On What We Do Now.

We Are Depleting This Immense Diversity And Abundance Of Life, And It Matters Tremendously For The Future Of The Planet.

Some Experts Look At Global Warming, Increased World Temperature, As The Critical Tipping Point That Is Causing A Crash In Coral Reef Health Around The World. And There's No Question That It Is A Factor, But It's Preceded By The Loss Of Resilience And Degradation.

America Gains Most When Individuals Have Great Freedom To Pursue Personal Goals Without Undue Government Interference.

Life In The Ocean Makes Earth Hospitable. We Are Sailing Along In The Universe And We Have A Blue Engine That Is Making Everything Alright.

Fortunately, We Know More About The Problems That We Have Than In All Preceding History. We Know Now The Consequences Of The Things That We Put Into The Air, Into The Water - Of The Way We Treat Life On Earth.

We Have Become Frighteningly Effective At Altering Nature.

In The Past Few Decades, Earth's Natural Systems Have Endured More Pressure Than In All Preceding Human History.

'green' Issues At Last Are Attracting Serious Attention, Owing To Critically Important Links Between The Environment And The Economy, Health, And Our Security.

If You Think The Ocean Isn't Important, Imagine Earth Without It. Mars Comes To Mind. No Ocean, No Life Support System.

Support Systems

It's Taken Us A Short Time To Change The Nature Of Nature. In My Lifetime, More Change Than During All Preceding Human History Put Together.

Throughout All Of Human History We've Enjoyed Certain Benign Circumstances: An Envelope Of Atmosphere, An Envelope Of Temperature. A Kind Of Resilience That If You Cut Down Trees, Then They'll Grow Back. You Take Fish, They Recover. You Put Stuff Into The Atmosphere That You Know Is Not Good For Us, But We Can Still Breathe. We Haven't Awakened, Generally, To The Sense Of Urgency That Does Exist.

There's A Vested Interest In Trying To Keep People Smoking Cigarettes.

Everybody Can Make Choices That Will Make Peace With The Natural World.

If Darwin Could Get Into A Submarine And See What I've Seen, Thousand Of Feet Beneath The Ocean, I Am Just Confident That He Would Be Inspired To Sit Down And Start Writing All Over Again.

The Image Of Earth From Space Transformed Our View Of Ourselves. It Is Maybe The Most Important Image That Exists - Because We Can See Ourselves In Context In A Way That Otherwise Would Be Really Hard To Explain. It Should Inspire Us To Wonder About It, To Want To Know Everything We Can About It And Do Everything We Can To Take Care Of It.

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.

Great Attention Gets Paid To Rainforests Because Of The Diversity Of Life There. Diversity In The Oceans Is Even Greater.

Scientists Never Stop Asking. They're Little Kids Who Never Grew Up.

Everyone Has Power. But It Doesn't Help If You Don't Use It.

We Still Have The Illusion That The Ocean Will Recover. That Even If We Do Have To Lose Sharks, People Don't Understand Why This Matters. The Evidence Is In Front Of Us, And We Fail To Take It In And Say, "now I Get It. Now I Understand."

Why Is It That Scuba Divers And Surfers Are Some Of The Strongest Advocates Of Ocean Conservation? Because They've Spent Time In And Around The Ocean, And They've Personally Seen The Beauty, The Fragility, And Even The Degradation Of Our Planet's Blue Heart.

Burning Fossil Fuels Has Given Us The Gift Of Seeing Ourselves In New Ways. But That Very Gift Now Enables Us To See We've Got To Change Our Ways.

The Observations That Have Developed Over The Years Have Given Us Perspective About Where We Fit In. We Are Newcomers, Really Recent Arrivals On A Planet That Is Four And A Half Billion Years Old.

When I Write A Scientific Treatise, I Might Reach 100 People. When The 'national Geographic' Covers A Project, It Communicates About Plants And Fish And Underwater Technology To More Than 10 Million People.

Every Time I Slip Into The Ocean, It's Like Going Home.

We Understand That We Must Make Peace With Nature - That Our Lives Depend On It.

We Don't Have To Be That Greedy Generation That Just Continued To Take Down The Underpinnings Of What Makes The Planet Work In Our Favor.

I Have Lots Of Heroes: Anyone And Everyone Who Does Whatever They Can To Leave The Natural World Better Than They Found It.

Rather Than Be Afraid Of Evolution And Try To Stifle Inquiry, People Should Revel In The Joys Of Knowing And Find A Serenity And A Joy In Being A Part The Rest Of Life On Earth. Not Apart From It, But A Part Of It.

We Are Blessed With A Place That Is Open To The Universe And, Despite This, Supports This Very Thin Envelope Of Air We Call Atmosphere, Which Holds Just The Right Amount Of Oxygen For Us To Breathe.

Forty Percent Of The United States Drains Into The Mississippi. It's Agriculture. It's Golf Courses. It's Domestic Runoff From Our Lawns And Roads. Ultimately, Where Does It Go? Downstream Into The Gulf.

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.

Give The Ocean A Break. Give Yourself A Break.

There Are Now More Than 4,000 Places In The Sea Around The World That Have Some Kind Of Protection. The Bad News: You Have To Look Hard To Find Them. What You Find Instead Is Destructive Fishing, Mining, Gas And Oil Exploration.

The Arctic Is An Ocean. The Southern Pole Is A Continent Surrounded By Ocean. The North Pole Is An Ocean, Or Northern Waters. It's An Ocean Surrounded By Land, Basically.

Earth As An Ecosystem Stands Out In The All Of The Universe. There's No Place That We Know About That Can Support Life As We Know It, Not Even Our Sister Planet, Mars, Where We Might Set Up Housekeeping Someday, But At Great Effort And Trouble We Have To Recreate The Things We Take For Granted Here.

There Are A Lot Of Smart Creatures Out There. Dolphins, Elephants, And Whales Are Smart. And There Are Some Really Smart Birds. I Know Some Really Intelligent Fish. But They Cannot Know What Humans Know And Are Incapable Of Inflicting As Much Damage.

Use Your Power To Do Whatever It Takes To Secure For Humankind An Enduring Place On This Little Blue Speck In The Universe - Our Only Hope.

With Respect To The Ocean Being The Heart Of Our Blue Planet: We Are Often Asked, 'how Much Protection Is Enough?' We Can Only Answer With Another Question: How Much Of Your Heart Is Worth Protecting?

The Arctic Is A Place That Historically, During All Preceding Human History, Has Largely Been An Icy Realm With An Impact On Ocean Currents. That, In Turn, Influences The Temperature Of The Planet. The Arctic Is Now Vulnerable Because Of The Excess Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere, With A Rate Of Melting That Is Stunning.

Since The Middle Of The 20th Century, More Has Been Learnt About The Ocean Than During All Preceding Human History; At The Same Time, More Has Been Lost.

In Terms Of Personal Choices, Let's All Think More Carefully About Where We Get Our Protein From.

If Darwin Could See What We Now See, What We Now Know About The Ocean, About The Atmosphere, About The Nature Of Life, As We Now Understand It, About The Importance Of Microbes - I Think He Would Just Beam With Joy That Many Of The Thoughts And The Glimpses Of The Majesty Of Life On Earth That He Had During His Life, Now Magnified Many Times Over.

Childcare Is A Huge Issue For Young Women Whose Work May Require Them To Leave Their Families For Weeks At A Time.

There Is Not A Well-funded Campaign Among Scientists To Say, "look, Here's The Evidence. You Can Read It Yourself. Here Are The Facts. We're Not Making This Up."

The Value Of Sharks' Lives Is Now Widely Understood To Be More Important Than Their Value As Products. And When You Have Sharks In An Area, It's A Sign Of Good Health. They're Top Predators, Which Means They Feed On Old, Sick, And Slower Fish, Keeping An Entire Population Healthy.

We Woke Up Some Years Ago About The Consequences Of Ozone Depletion, The Hole In The Atmosphere. You Can't See It. You Can't Taste It. You Can't Smell It. But Now We Do Regard That As A Key Issue. It's A Scientific Finding.

Historically, Girls Have Not Been Encouraged To Be Scientists, To Be Explorers, And There's A Social Kind Of Constraint, Of Course. Having The Responsibility, A Disproportionate Part Of The Responsibility, For Caring For Families, Caring For Children. I Know This Challenge From Firsthand Experience Because I Have Three Children And Four Grandsons.and Some Of The Time I Have Spent As A Scientist And As An Explorer Has Meant Choosing To Not Be With My Children And Grandchildren As Much As I Might Otherwise Have Done Had I Not Been A Scientist, An Explorer.

It Doesn't Matter Where On Earth You Live, Everyone Is Utterly Dependent On The Existence Of That Lovely, Living Saltwater Soup. There's Plenty Of Water In The Universe Without Life, But Nowhere Is There Life Without Water.

I Am Not In Any Hurry To Grow Up.

The Oxygen Cycle, The Nitrogen Cycle, The Carbon Cycle, The Water Cycle - All Of These Are Linked To The Existence Of Life In The Sea.

Humans Have Always Wondered The Big Questions, "who Am I? Where Have I Come From? Where Am I Going?" It's Part Of Human Nature. It's Perhaps The Underpinnings Of Religion.

You Don't Have To Touch The Ocean For The Ocean To Touch You

Never Before Have We Known What We Know.

My First Breath Was Just...it Just Seemed Impossible That You Could Actually Breathe Underwater. I Knew In My Mind It Was Possible, But Actually Experiencing It Was Such A Gulp Of Joy And I Feel It Every Time I Go Under The Ocean. I Love Doing It, To Be Able To Feel Weightless, To Spin On One Finger, To Do Somersaults, To Be Like A Graceful Ballerina - Even With A Huge Tank On Your Back You Can Do The Most Extraordinary Things.

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.

With Care And Protection, With Safe Havens In The Ocean, There Is Still A Good Chance That We Can Turn Things Around.

It Is Not Too Late To Turn Things Around.

We Are Taking Way More Out Of The Ocean Than The Ocean Can Replenish.

It's A Fact Of Life That There Will Be Oil Spills, As Long As Oil Is Moved From Place To Place, But We Must Have Provisions To Deal With Them, And A Capability That Is Commensurate With The Size Of The Oil Shipments.

We Have Found Ways To Capture, Kill And Market Ocean Wildlife On An Unprecedented Scale. It's An Absolute Catastrophe.

No Water, No Life. No Blue, No Green.

Far And Away, The Greatest Threat To The Ocean, And Thus To Ourselves, Is Ignorance. But We Can Do Something About That.

We're Still Under The Weight Of This Impression That The Ocean Is Too Big To Fail, That The Planet Is Too Big To Fail.

The Earth Is A Tiny Blue Speck In A Universe Of Unfriendly Options.

Why Does Evolution Matter? There Is So Much About The Evolution Of Life, The Development Of Life On Earth That Should Rivet The Attention Of Everyone To Understand Where We've Come From And Where We Might Be Going. We Need To Understand The World Around Us If We Are To Succeed As A Species On The Planet.

All Through College, I Had Frequently Been The Only Girl In A Science Class - Which Wasn't Such A Bad Deal.

We Must Protect Our Ocean As If Our Lives Depend Upon It, Because They Do.

I Want Everybody To Go Jump In The Ocean To See For Themselves How Beautiful It Is, How Important It Is To Get Acquainted With Fish Swimming In The Ocean, Rather Than Just Swimming With Lemon Slices And Butter.

Eating Wildlife Is Probably Not The Smartest Thing That We Can Do In Terms Of Maintaining The Integrity Of Natural Systems.

Even If You Never Have The Chance To See Or Touch The Ocean, The Ocean Touches You With Every Breath You Take, Every Drop Of Water You Drink, Every Bite You Consume. Everyone, Everywhere Is Inextricably Connected To And Utterly Dependent Upon The Existence Of The Sea.

With Knowing Comes Caring.

The Best Scientists And Explorers Have The Attributes Of Kids! They Ask Question And Have A Sense Of Wonder. They Have Curiosity. 'who, What, Where, Why, When, And How!' They Never Stop Asking Questions, And I Never Stop Asking Questions, Just Like A Five Year Old.

Asking Questions

Ocean Acidification - The Excess Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere That Is Turning The Oceans Increasingly Acid - Is A Slow But Accelerating Impact With Consequences That Will Greatly Overshadow All The Oil Spills Put Together. The Warming Trend That Is Co2-related Will Overshadow All The Oil Spills That Have Ever Occurred Put Together.

Knowledge Is The Key To Making A Difference.

Making A Difference

We Have An Atmosphere That Is Roughly 21% Oxygen. The Rest Of It Is Largely Nitrogen. There's Just Enough Carbon Dioxide (co2) To Drive Photosynthesis. That Has Been, Throughout The History Of Our Species, Pretty Stable. Until Recently.

This Much Is Certain: We Have The Power To Damage The Sea, But No Sure Way To Heal The Harm.

Santa Monica Bay Is Less Polluted Today Than When I First Moved To The Area In The 1970s, Because Actions Have Been Taken To Avoid Putting Some Of The Noxious Materials Into The Sea. I Think People Are More Aware Than They Once Were, The Air Is Cleaner, Water Generally Is, In Spite Of The Fact That There Are More People.

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.

We Have The Capacity To Alter The Nature Of Nature. No, We Don't Have Just The Capacity - We Are Altering The Nature Of Nature, The Natural Systems That Cause The Planet To Function In Our Favor.

When You Think About The Real Cost Of So-called Cheap Energy That Has Driven Our Prosperity To Unprecedented Levels, For Some Of Us, To Our Horror, We've Realized That This Has The Potential For Burning Brightly And Then Snuffing Out.

What We Put Into The Atmosphere In Terms Of Burning Fuel Is Unprecedented.

The Oceans Deserve Our Respect And Care, But You Have To Know Something Before You Can Care About It.

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...we Are Learning Otherwise.

The Most Important Part Is To Take On The Challenge Of Protecting The Ocean As If Your Life Depends On It - Because It Does.

If You Make The Choice To Just Go With The Flow, That Is A Choice To Make A Difference In A Negative Way.

Making A Difference

With Every Drop Of Water You Drink, Every Breath You Take, You're Connected To The Sea. No Matter Where On Earth You Live.

If We Have A Hope Of Really Understanding Our Place In Nature And Of Carving Out A Place For Ourselves That Is Sustainable, It's Primarily Because Of The New Level Of Communication. It Used To Be, 'what You Don't Have In Your Mind, You Have On Your Shelf.' But Now We Have The Web.

If The Sea Is Sick, We'll Feel It. If It Dies, We Die. Our Future And The State Of The Oceans Are One.

For Humans, The Arctic Is A Harshly Inhospitable Place, But The Conditions There Are Precisely What Polar Bears Require To Survive - And Thrive. 'harsh' To Us Is 'home' For Them. Take Away The Ice And Snow, Increase The Temperature By Even A Little, And The Realm That Makes Their Lives Possible Literally Melts Away.

The Burning Of Fossil Fuels Has Altered The Amount Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere So Rapidly And So Abundantly That Now, We Are Driving Not Just The Warming Trend, Not Just The Sea Level Rise That Is A Consequence Of The Warming Trend That Is Melting Polar Ice And Alpine Ice, But Also [ocean Acidification].

We Want To Believe That We Can Continue Doing What We've Done For The Past Thousand Years And Not Worry About The Consequences Coming Back To Us.

People I Know Who Succeed Don't Mind Working. Those Who Are Competent Seem To Like Doing Things Well -- Not Stopping Because They Haven't Accomplished What They Wanted To On The First Go-round. They're Willing To Do It Twenty Times, If Necessary. There's An Illusion That The Good People Can Easily Do Something, And It's Not Necessarily True. They're Just Determined To Do It Right. I Was Impressed By Hearing One Of The Women At Radcliffe Talk About Writing A Poem, How Many Revisions A Single Poem Sometimes Has To Go Through -- Fifty Or Sixty Revisions To Come Out With A Poem Sixteen Lines Long.

I Am Driven By What I Know; That The World I Love Is In Trouble.

There's Plenty Of Water In The Universe Without Life, But Nowhere Is There Life Without Water.

We Have To Look In The Mirror First. What Are We Doing? How Can We Make A Change? It Always Starts With Looking In The Mirror. Every Individual Can. Every Individual Can Make A Difference Either By Proactively Doing Something Positive Or By Doing Nothing. That's A Decision, Too.

Making A Difference

Protecting Vital Sources Of Renewal - Unscathed Marshes, Healthy Reefs, And Deep-sea Gardens - Will Provide Hope For The Future Of The Gulf, And For All Of Us.

It's An Appreciation For Life Generally, Every Bit Of Life, The Smallest Creature That Lives In The Intestines Of Termites That Make Termite Life Possible - To The Leaves That Turn Out Oxygen And Grab Carbon Dioxide And With Water Make Simple Sugars That Feed Much Of The World. I Mean, These Are Everyday Miracles.

Globally Sharks Have Been Killed For Their Fins, For Their Cartilage, For Their Livers, For Their Meat. But Mostly What Has Driven Some Species Of Sharks To Near Extinction - Including The Hammerhead Shark - Is The New Luxury Taste For Shark Fin Soup.

The Most Important Thing For People To Know About The Governance Of The Arctic Is That We Have A Chance Now To Act To Maintain The Integrity Of The System Or To Lose It. To Lose It Means That We Will Dismember The Vital Systems That Make The Arctic Work. It's Not Just A Cost To The People Who Live There. It's A Cost To All People Everywhere.

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.

Only Two Percent Of The Ocean Is Fully Protected Right Now.

We Want To Think Of Ourselves As Truly Special Creatures That Are Unique In The Universe And, Well, We Are. And We Have That Capacity To Wonder, To Question, And To See Ourselves In The Context Of All Of Life That Has Preceded The Present Time, And All That Will Go Off Far Into The Future, One Way Or Another.

We Need To Respect The Oceans And Take Care Of Them As If Our Lives Depended On It. Because They Do.

The Exxon Valdez Spill Triggered A Swift And Strong Response That Changed Policies About Shipping, About Double-hulled Construction. A Number Of Laws Came Into Place.

We Humans Have This Idea That The Ocean Is So Big, So Vast, So Resilient That It Doesn't Matter What We Do To It. That May Have Been True 1,000 Years Ago. But In The Last 100, Especially The Last 50 Years, We Have Destroyed The Assets That Make Our Lives Possible.

No Creature On Earth Ever Has Organized Themselves In Ways That We Have, With The Capacity To Alter The Nature Of Nature The Way We Have.

If Somebody Dumps Something Noxious In My Back Yard, The Dumper Is The Last One I Would Call On To Repair The Damage.

The Opportunity That Is Unique [to Our] Time Is What Inspires Me To Do Everything I Can To Move Things Forward. This Is The First Time That We Have The Capacity To Understand Our Place In The Greater Scheme Of Things To The Extent That We Do.

It's Baffling Why The Issues Relating To Climate Change - [which] Have Far More Obvious And Tangible And Much More Clear-cut Evidence About The Cause - Have Been Slower For People To Accept As A Given.

Health To The Ocean Means Health For Us.

What We Once Used As Weapons Of War, We Now Use As Weapons Against Fish.

Ignorance Is The Biggest Problem Of All For The Ocean - And For Many Other Things As Well.

Evolution Is Not Something To Be Feared. It's To Be Celebrated, Embraced, And Understood.

Not Only Who Am I, But Who Are We? And Where Are We Going? It's The "we." It's The Social Connections That Are Special To Human Beings.

We Couldn't Go To The Moon On Whale Oil. We Don't Have The Capacity Yet To Consider Doing Such Things As Harnessing Current Sunlight. We're Burning Ancient Sunlight In Order To Get Us To Where We Now Are. But It's Costly.

My Parents Moved To Florida When I Was 12, And My Backyard Was The Gulf Of Mexico.

We Have Been Far Too Aggressive About Extracting Ocean Wildlife, Not Appreciating That There Are Limits And Even Points Of No Return.

This Is A Living Planet. Look Around. Mars, Venus, Jupiter. Look Beyond Our Solar System. Where Else Is There A Place That Works, That Is Just Right For The Likes Of Us? It Has Not Happened Just Instantly. It Is Vulnerable To Our Actions. But It's The Result Of Four And A Half Billion Years Of Evolution, Of Change Over Time. And It Changes Every Day, All The Time. It Would Be In Our Interest To Try To Maintain A Certain Level Of Stability That Has Enabled Us To Prosper, To Not Wreck The Very Systems That Give Us Life.

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.

Throughout All Of Human History We Have Consumed The Natural World. All Creatures Do. Birds Do. Fish Do. Earthworms Do. We Consume The Natural World As A Source Of Our Survival. But No Creature Has Ever Consumed At The Scale That Humans Have, And Now There Are Seven Billion Of Us. I Think The Good News Is That A Large Percentage Of Those Seven Billion Minds Can Work To Make Better Decisions.

As A Child, I Was Aware Of The Widely-held Attitude That The Ocean Is So Big, So Resilient That We Could Use The Sea As The Ultimate Place To Dispose Of Anything We Did Not Want, From Garbage And Nuclear Wastes To Sludge From Sewage To Entire Ships That Had Reached The End Of Their Useful Life.

When Some People Look At A Shrimp They Think, "hmm. Delicious." When I Look At A Shrimp I Think, "you're A Miracle, Absolutely Incredible. Your Ancestors Have Gone Back Hundreds Of Millions Of Years." And To Develop A Thing As Simple As A Shrimp Cocktail, You Have To Calculate The Hundreds Of Millions Of Years That Have Preceded That Moment Where You're Sitting There With Your Sauce And Fork Poised.

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.

We've Got To Somehow Stabilize Our Connection To Nature So That In 50 Years From Now, 500 Years, 5,000 Years From Now There Will Still Be A Wild System And Respect For What It Takes To Sustain Us.

Success Underwater Depends Mostly On How You Conduct Yourself. Diving Can Be The Most Relaxing Experience In The World. Your Weight Seems To Disappear. Space Travel Will Be Available Only To A Few Individuals For Some Time, But The Oceans Are Available To Almost Everyone - Now.

Ice Ages Have Come And Gone. Coral Reefs Have Persisted.

Our Insatiable Appetite For Fossil Fuels And The Corporate Mandate To Maximize Shareholder Value Encourages Drilling Without Taking Into Account The Costs To The Ocean, Even Without Major Spills.

We Are Not Only Warming The Ocean And The Planet As A Whole, But We Are Also Acidifying The Ocean And Changing Its Chemistry.

Nothing Has Prepared Sharks, Squid, Krill And Other Sea Creatures For Industrial-scale Extraction That Destroys Entire Ecosystems While Targeting A Few Species.

I've Spent Thousands Of Hours Under Water. And Even In The Deepest Dive I Have Ever Made, 2.5 Miles (about 4 Kilometers) Down, I Saw Trash And Other Tangible Evidence Of Our Presence.

There's Something Missing About How We're Informing The Youngsters Coming Along About What Matters In The World. We Teach Them The Numbers And The Letters, But We Fail To Communicate The Importance Of Our Connection To The Living World.

Many Of Us Ask What Can I, As One Person, Do, But History Shows Us That Everything Good And Bad Starts Because Somebody Does Something Or Does Not Do Something.

Places Change Over Time With Or Without Oil Spills, But Humans Are Responsible For The Deepwater Horizon Gusher - And Humans, As Well As The Corals, Fish And Other Creatures, Are Suffering The Consequences.

I Actually Love Diving At Night; You See A Lot Of Fish Then That You Don't See In The Daytime.

You Should Know What Is Taken Out Of The Ecosystem In Order To Give You A Moment's Sustenance.

Most Of Life On Earth Has A Deep Past, Much Deeper Than Ours. And We Have Benefited From The Distillation Of All Preceding History, Call It Evolutionary History If You Will.

I've Had The Joy Of Spending Thousands Of Hours Under The Sea. I Wish I Could Take People Along To See What I See, And To Know What I Know.

Meat Reared On Land Matures Relatively Quickly, And It Takes Only A Few Pounds Of Plants To Produce A Pound Of Meat.

I Want To Get Out In The Water. I Want To See Fish, Real Fish, Not Fish In A Laboratory.

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.

The Ocean Is Our Life Support System. No Blue, No Green. It's Really A Miracle That We Have Got A Place That Works In Our Favor.

Support Systems

We Are All Together In This, We Are All Together In This Single Living Ecosystem Called Planet Earth.

I Hope For Your Help To Explore And Protect The Wild Ocean In Ways That Will Restore The Health And, In So Doing, Secure Hope For Humankind. Health To The Ocean Means Health For Us.

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.

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.

We Have The Power To Abstain From Destructive Behavior.

Destructive Behavior

There Is An Enormous Amount To Be Learned About The Sea; Like Most Wildernesses, It Has Great Potential.

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.

The Sudden Release Of Five Million Barrels Of Oil, Enormous Quantities Of Methane And Two Million Gallons Of Toxic Dispersants Into An Already Greatly Stressed Gulf Of Mexico Will Permanently Alter The Nature Of The Area.

Enormous Quantities

Look At The Bark Of A Redwood, And You See Moss. If You Peer Beneath The Bits And Pieces Of The Moss, You'll See Toads, Small Insects, A Whole Host Of Life That Prospers In That Miniature Environment. A Lumberman Will Look At A Forest And See So Many Board Feet Of Lumber. I See A Living City.

Any Astronaut Can Tell You You've Got To Do Everything You Can To Learn About Your Life Support System And Then Do Everything You Can To Take Care Of It.

Support Systems

Humans Are The Only Creatures With The Ability To Dive Deep In The Sea, Fly High In The Sky, Send Instant Messages Around The Globe, Reflect On The Past, Assess The Present And Imagine The Future.

It Isn't Too Late To Shift From The Swift, Sharp Decline Of Ocean Systems In Recent Decades To An Era Of Steady Recovery. There Is Time, And There Is A Growing Awareness, Which Is The Best Way To Counter Indifference. People Who Know Might Care.

Like A Shipwreck Or A Jetty, Almost Anything That Forms A Structure In The Ocean, Whether It Is Natural Or Artificial Over Time, Collects Life.

Sharks Are Beautiful Animals, And If You're Lucky Enough To See Lots Of Them, That Means That You're In A Healthy Ocean. You Should Be Afraid If You Are In The Ocean And Don't See Sharks.

The End Of Commercial Fishing Is Predicted Long Before The Middle Of The 21st Century.

I Hope That Someday We Will Find Evidence That There Is Intelligent Life Among Humans On This Planet.

The Ocean Seemed Like A Sea Of Eden. But Now We Are Facing Paradise Lost.

The Diversity Of Life On Earth, Generally, Is Astonishing. But Despite Those Large Numbers, It's Also Important To Recognize That Every Species, One Way Or Another, Is Vulnerable To Extinction. And In Our Time On Earth... Our Impact On The Diversity Of Life Has Been Profound.

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.

We've Got To Alter Our Fossil Fuel Dependence And Go To Other Energy Sources.

I Suggest To Everyone: Look In The Mirror. Ask Yourself: Who Are You? What Are Your Talents? Use Them, And Do What You Love.

When You Are A Child You Learn Your Alphabet, Your Numbers, But Increasingly, We Must Learn From The Earliest Stages That The Highest Priority Has To Be To Maintain The World As A Safe Place For Humankind.

I Love Music Of All Kinds, But There's No Greater Music Than The Sound Of My Grandchildren Laughing; My Kids, Too.

When I Arrived On The Planet, There Were Only Two Billion. Wildlife Was More Abundant, We Were Less So; Now The Situation Is Reversed.

You Should Ask Where Your Food Is Coming From.

The Next 10 Years Could Be The Most Important In The Next 10,000.

It Has Taken These Many Hundreds Of Millions Of Years To Fine-tune The Earth To A Point Where It Is Suitable For The Likes Of Us.

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