Quote

Our job is to keep what is working intact and not destroy what we have got.

Sylvia Earle

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sylvia Earle
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: August 30
Biologist
Botanist
Explorer
Marine Biologist
Oceanographer
Gibbstown
New Jersey
Sylvia Alice Earle
S.A.Earle
Working
Jobs
Keep
Intact
Destroy

More quotes by Sylvia Earle

Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
I am driven by what I know that the world I love is in trouble.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
Eating wildlife is probably not the smartest thing that we can do in terms of maintaining the integrity of natural systems.
Sylvia Earle
Image
Only two percent of the ocean is fully protected right now.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
Fish from all over the world, from deep in the sea, wind up in countries from Germany to Japan. That is just crazy.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
The oceans deserve our respect and care, but you have to know something before you can care about it.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
I suggest to everyone: Look in the mirror. Ask yourself: Who are you? What are your talents? Use them, and do what you love.
Sylvia Earle
Image
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.
Sylvia Earle
Image
We are taking way more out of the ocean than the ocean can replenish.
Sylvia Earle
Image
We are not only warming the ocean and the planet as a whole, but we are also acidifying the ocean and changing its chemistry.
Sylvia Earle
Image
Scientists never stop asking. They're little kids who never grew up.
Sylvia Earle