Dr. Sylvia Earle has been exploring the oceans since 1953. She has been called "Her Deepness" by both The New Yorker and the New York Times, has been named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, and was Time magazine's first "Hero for the Planet." Earle has participated in over 75 National Geographic expeditions, logging more than 6,500 hours underwater, as well as lectured in 70 countries and authored more than 170 publications. Her new book, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One, with a forward by Bill McKibben, is being called the Silent Spring of our era. She is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and 2009 TED prize recipient as well as the founder of Deep Search Foundation.
On Tuesday, December 8, 2009, Earle will be the honored guest at Green Drinks New York City's annual holiday party, themed "Our Oceans" (to be held at 15 East 27th Street; greendrinksnyc.com). She will also speak on Monday, December 7, 2009 at the Explorers Club Public Lecture Series' Second State of the Oceans Forum: "Facing the Crisis, Reasons for Hope," at The Explorers Club, (46 East 70th Street; www.1planet1ocean.org; 212.628.8383). MetroGreenBusiness.com caught up with Earle prior to her New York appearances.
Where was your first dive?
My first chance to dive was 1953 in northern Florida, five miles off shore, 15 feet down. I was in Marine Biology class. It was a graduate class but I was taking it as an undergraduate. My two words of instruction were “breathe naturally” because there weren't any classes. There was no instruction. It was basically common sense. At that time, people learned by doing, basically. I mean, you still do that in many ways. But the classes that are now available to give you real instruction about the dos and don'ts make it ever so much easier. They compress in a couple of weeks what it might take years to accumulate by trial and error.
You must have seen the whole field of oceanography happen.
It was like the early days of flying.
Speaking of flying, you explored the oceans 15 years before the man on the moon. How would you compare ocean exploration with going the other way, with space exploration?
For a while there seemed to be a closely parallel course. But the investment going skyward has greatly exceeded that going into the exploration of this planet, for reasons that are pretty easy to understand. I mean, the commercial, industrial, and military applications of going skyward have funded the continued expansion of technology and applications of aviation and basically aerospace. But there remains a gap now in terms of exploring the ocean because we must understand how this planet works. We did not know until fairly recently that we have the capacity to alter the nature of nature. Of the systems that keep us alive. In my lifetime we have come to understand we have the capacity— that we are an agent of profound change. Until very recently we thought that the natural systems were ours for the taking and there were no limits to what we could do without consequence. Now we know that there are consequences, and it's as if we had a two-by-four strike us across our brow and [let us know] that we have to take care of the systems that take care of us or our future is doomed.
The oceans are much more affected now by our actions?
Our fate, our future and that of nature, land, and sea are closely coupled. We have gotten away with a great deal of destruction on land, largely because the oceans have been the great stabilizer, until recently. Now we have been able to attack the oceans with the same vigor and destructive capacity that we applied to the land. We're really seeing the crunch. We're seeing it in climate change. We are seeing it in the oceans capacity to, or the degradation of capacity to take up carbon. We have yet to measure it exactly, but I think that net of 70 percent-plus of the oxygen we breathe, that is in the atmosphere, comes from oceans. And it doesn't just come from H2O. It comes from little organisms that live in the water and through photosynthesis give off oxygen.
Getting back to what you said earlier about our wakeup call regarding the oceans being like getting hit over the head with a two-by-four. Do you feel like the majority of people have now really been hit over the head?
Climate change is the big wakeup call. It hasn't yet penetrated the minds of everyone, but the leaders involved in this know that the oceans drive climate change and weather, and are a great stabilizer of temperature. Oceans are the flywheel that maintains the planet and holds it together. And it's not just the physical characteristics of the ocean, but of course that is part of it. It's the chemistry of life. It's the fact that the ocean is not just rocks and water—it's a living system. That's really what counts; that's what's been missing till fairly recently—the awareness that life in the ocean shapes the characteristic of the planet as a whole. All life counts. The burning of the Amazon rainforests contribute an enormous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. But equally important is the loss of capacity of the ocean to absorb CO2. There's the double whammy.
Are we up for the task?
We are the only creature on the planet that has the capacity to pull back and look at the world and our place in it, to understand what we're doing to it and to do something about it. On the one hand, you can say we're the planet's worst nightmare, but we are also the best hope, not just for ourselves but for all the rest of the planet.
Tell me about your foundation, Deep Search?
Deep Search Foundation is intended to be a bridge among international organizations to facilitate new technologies that will advance our access to the seas and to work with every organization out there to protect our oceans. I work with Deep Search to raise money and awareness. We work with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international organization that represents more than 100 countries and nearly 1,000 nonprofit organizations around the world, to bring into place policies needed to protect critical areas of the ocean.
Do you ever get tired?
There is a time to get tired, but not now. Now we need to mobilize ourselves at this most exciting time in history. This is far more energizing than any war. This is an opportunity for those of us alive on the planet right here that no generation before us had because they did not know we had a problem. They thought no matter what we did that life would go on somehow. Never again will we have such a good opportunity.
Paul McGinniss writes the column "Green Advocate" for ScheinMedia's New York House magazine. His blog, www.thenewyorkgreenadvocate.blogspot.com, includes a more in-depth interview with Sylvia Earle.
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