there’s a chemistry of life that has this capacity for enormous variation, maybe infinite variation. It’s a source of endless wonder and something th… - Sylvia A. Earle
" "there’s a chemistry of life that has this capacity for enormous variation, maybe infinite variation. It’s a source of endless wonder and something that — it’s worth using our minds, that special gift that we have. There are other intelligent creatures out there — whales, dolphins, elephants, fish. Some of them are really smart. But they don’t know what we know. They can’t see the inside of a star or the inside of a starfish — except some of them, maybe, to eat them. But we have this power not only to explore, but we can go back in time. We can anticipate the future, far into the future. We can plot a course for ourselves based on intelligence. And the trick is: OK, homo sapiens, the smart ones, the wise ones — let’s take advantage of that capacity...Let’s put that into action and not just be like the bacteria on a dish that consume everything until they die. We don’t have to do that.
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About Sylvia A. Earle
Sylvia Earle (born 1935) is an American marine biologist, explorer, author, and lecturer. Since 1998 she has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. Earle was the first woman to be appointed chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Sylvia Alice Earle
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S.A.Earle
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Sylvia A Earle
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Sylvia Earle
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Additional quotes by Sylvia A. Earle
(What is the single most important thing we can do for the oceans today?) Right now a disproportionate bite out of the ocean is being taken by a relatively small number of countries doing industrial fishing. We’ve got to get over this idea that wildlife from the ocean is essential for our food security. What we now are beginning to understand is the high cost of eating fish. What does it take to make a pound of tuna? A lot of halibut or cod. What makes the halibut? Smaller fish. What do they eat? Krill. Krill eat phytoplankton, zooplankton. Over the years thousands of pounds of phytoplankton make a single pound of tuna. So that tuna is expensive in terms of the carbon that it has captured. The more fish we take out of the sea, the more carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere.
Sometimes I try a poetic approach and describe how luminous, rainbow-colored jellies, starlike planktonic creatures, giant squid, translucent pink prawns, gray dolphins, brown lizards, spotted giraffes, emerald mosses, rustling grasses, every leaf on every tree and all people everywhere, even residents of inland cities and deserts who may never see the sea, are nonetheless dependent upon it.
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