"Go stare a fish in the face": Sylvia Earle interviewed by Washington International Student
Legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle was interviewed by Washington International School (WIS) 11th grader Rebecca Leder at a symposium held at the World Bank by the Center for International Education at WIS. Click on the "Sylvia Earle interview" podcast in the player above to listen. You can also read a transcript of the interview here.
From Dr. Earle's web page on nationalgeographic.com:
Sylvia Earle, called "Her Deepness" by the New Yorker and the New York Times, "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, and the first "Hero for the Planet," is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer with experience as a field research scientist. She also is executive director for corporate and nonprofit organizations, including the Aspen Institute, the Conservation Fund, American Rivers, Mote Marine Laboratory, Duke University Marine Laboratory, Rutgers Institute for Marine Science, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and Ocean Conservancy. Former chief scientist of NOAA, Earle is president of Deep Search International and chair of the Advisory Council for the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. She has a B.S. from Florida State University, an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Duke University, and 15 honorary degrees. She has authored more than 150 scientific, technical, and popular publications, lectured in more than 60 countries, and appeared in hundreds of television productions.
Earle has led more than 60 expeditions and logged more than 6,000 hours underwater, including leading the first team of women aquanauts during the Tektite Project in 1970 and setting a record for solo diving to a depth of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). Her research concerns marine ecosystems with special reference to exploration and the development and use of new technologies for access and effective operations in the deep sea and other remote environments.
Honors include the Netherlands Order of the Golden Ark, inclusion in the National Women's Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Achievement, and medals from the Explorers Club, the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, the Lindbergh Foundation, the National Wildlife Federation, Sigma Xi, Barnard College, the New England Aquarium, the Seattle Aquarium, the Society of Women Geographers, and the National Parks Conservation Association.
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Below is a transcript of Rebecca's interview with Dr. Earle.
Knowledge truly is power. The first giant step is to become informed, and then communicate and ask questions. Be fearless. There are new ways of capturing images and sharing images and joining forces with others to create a wave of action. Knowing is the start, though, you can't really care if you don't know. You can't really responsibly act if you don't have the facts.
I think it's really helpful to have experiences, to go into the ocean. If you can't go into the ocean directly, do it vicariously and go to an aquarium. Get up to speed not just by listening to what others have to say but seeing it for yourself.
Go stare a fish in the face. I'm serious, it sounds kind of silly, but you'll think differently if you begin to appreciate what a miracle every form of life actually is, and then for us to be careless about how we spend life, not just human life although that too, but the living systems that keep us alive.
We're squandering the natural world and it's coming around to the point of a crisis time. The water, the air, the capacity of the planet to produce enough food to support 7 billion of us, let alone twice that number, which is something you can see on the horizon. Our numbers are increasing but the natural world is shrinking and there's a point of no return. Our capacity to consume has already outstretched the capacity of the natural world to recover. It's true in the ocean; it's true with the forest. It's only through ingenious techniques that we have managed to harness the power of a handful of plants and animals to give us most of the calories that feed most of us.
But we can do better than that. What we take out of the ocean, we say harvest the ocean, but it's actually wildlife. We are just hunters and gatherers in the sea and so many people just don't appreciate that, they think that the ocean is constantly renewing itself. It's not. We are unsustainably extracting, beyond any reasonable hope that the ocean can continue to prosper.
We will be eliminating fishing, commercial fishing, one way or another. Through conscious, thoughtful decisions that we can't continue to extract 100 million tons of wildlife out of the ocean every year using these destructive processes that destroy the habitat, destroy the system in the process. Long lines, trawls, etc. Either we'll make conscious decisions to cut way back, or individual decisions like "I will not eat tuna, I choose not to have swordfish, I'm not going to eat Chilean Sea Bass." Those are personal decisions. Or we'll continue doing business as usual and in 30 years they'll be gone anyway. The trend is we've lost 90% in 50 years; how much longer will it take us to do in the rest?
We should stop trawling. Period. It's an inexcusable technique. When it was first introduced many years ago in Britain, they outlawed it almost at once because it was recognized to be so amazingly destructive. People were up in arms. This is such a wasteful way to catch fish, but over the years it's sneaked back into the way of doing business and now we're so detached from it.
People don't know what happens when a trawl goes across a sea floor. They just don't know. I think knowing again is the key, if you were down there, I've been there, and seen what looks like a super-highway of flattened ocean floor where before you had a prosperous, diverse and productive ecosystem and it's just trashed. One time use, and then thrown away. Or, it could be an enduring part of our economy, a during part of our life support system, an enduring source of many things that right now we are not even thinking of as valuable.
It took 4 ½ billion years to get there and we're burning through the assets. You could never put it back. You could make it better. The main thing we can do is to stop the destructive actions and allow the natural systems to work their magic, do their thing. It won't be restored to what it was, but it will be better than what it is. We keep hammering the ocean; it's just crazy. There seems to be a lack of connection between what people think matters and the ocean, when in fact the ocean is critical to everything we do.
Anyone can put on a face mask and be better informed, even in a pond. Even in a stream or a river. To get a chance to see what the creatures look like, how they live what they do. Jane Goodall used to go sit in the forest and watch the creatures there. In a way, that's what I try to do with humpback whales. Go be where they are. You can do it with frogs; you can do it with bass. Don't miss an opportunity to see the blue part of the planet.
Direct experience is the best experience, but beyond that just tune in to the people who have gone and who are just thrilled to share their views, the films, the stories, lots of great books that are out there to literally whet your appetite.
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