‘Our life support system is at risk’: Interview with ‘Her Deepness’ Sylvia Earle

ATHENS — At 88, Sylvia Earle is at an age when most people would be slowing down. But retirement doesn’t appear to be on the radar of the famous oceanographer and marine biologist, known by many as “Her Deepness” due to the more than 7,500 hours she’s spent underwater. When Earle’s not diving in the ocean, she’s speaking at events or campaigning for her nonprofit organization, Mission Blue, with boundless energy to inspire global action to protect the ocean. As she told Mongabay, “When you’ve seen what I’ve had the privilege of seeing, I’m just driven to try to share the view.”

For some, Earle needs no further introduction. But for those unfamiliar with her, it’s worth knowing a little about her life and work. Earle studied biology and oceanography before earning a Ph.D. in phycology, the study of algae. Early in her career, before her doctoral studies were complete, Earle joined several research expeditions, including ones that voyaged into the Indian Ocean, the Galápagos Islands, the Chilean coast, and the Panama Canal Zone between 1964 and 1966. She was one of the only women on board for many of these expeditions.

In 1968, Earle became the first woman scientist to descend into the ocean in a submersible vehicle, which she did as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s Man-in-Sea project. The following year, Earle led an all-female team to participate in the Tektite II Project, which required the team to live 50 feet (15 meters) underwater for two weeks to study the world beneath the waves. Another feat of Earle’s career took place in 1979, when she performed the deepest untethered sea walk at 381 m (1,250 ft), a record that has never been broken.

Besides setting records, Earle has more than 225 publications to her name and led more than 100 expeditions. She’s received more than 100 awards and honors from around the world, including being named Time magazine’s first “Hero for the Planet,” and a “Living Legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Earle has held numerous positions throughout her career, including being the first woman appointed as chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in 1990. Now, she serves as president and chair of California-based Mission Blue and is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Part of Mission Blue’s work is identifying “hope spots” in the ocean, which the organization defines as places “scientifically identified as critical to the health of the ocean” and that are championed by “local conservationists whom we support with communications, expeditions and scientific advisory.” To date, Mission Blue has established 162 hope spots encompassing 57.6 million square kilometers (22.2 million square miles) of the ocean. While some of these hope spots are already protected, others still need protection — and part of Earle’s work is trying to facilitate policies and processes that would instill such protection.

One of the latest events Earle attended was the 9th Our Ocean Conference in Athens, between April 15 and 17. On April 16, Mongabay’s Elizabeth Claire Alberts had the opportunity to sit down with Earle to ask her about how she views the problems facing our oceans, the actions that need to be taken, and how to find and hold on to hope in a world where environmental destruction is becoming increasingly apparent.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: The last time I saw you was at the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon. I know you travel all the time; you’re at so many events. How do you maintain the energy to do everything you do, especially in your 80s?

Sylvia Earle: When you’ve seen what I’ve had the privilege of seeing, I’m just driven to try to share the view. Imagine the astronauts coming back from the sky, having seen what very few people have ever been privileged to see, and they didn’t tell us; they didn’t say how important it is to understand what they can grasp about the nature of Earth when they see it from above.

I’ve been privileged to spend thousands of hours under the sea, living underwater on 10 different occasions, using submarines to go deep within the blue heart of the planet. And I just cannot sit back and not do everything I can to get others to see for themselves and try to inspire them to understand that the ocean is in trouble, and, therefore, we’re in trouble. Most people don’t see it because they look at the surface.

What we have done in our lifetime to convert nature into sources of our prosperity … there’s a cost to it that we’re beginning to acknowledge. The climate is changing. The chemistry of the planet is changing. Our life support system is at risk. Therefore, we’re at risk. Ask any astronaut when your life support system is in trouble; you had better try to fix it. We know how to protect what remains of the ancient systems, from the old-growth forests, kelp forests, or coral reefs — anything that’s still in pretty good shape. Don’t lose it, and try to restore what we can so that we have a safe place.

We’re at the best point that we could possibly imagine, armed with what we now know. Not only can we see the problems — we also know what to do. You asked me what keeps me motivated. It’s that sense of urgency. We have time, but not a lot. And I see our progress. You see nations coming together to protect the high seas, to protect biodiversity, to commit to protect at least 30% of the land and ocean to safeguard it proactively, not just casually. So you understand that protecting nature is not a luxury; protecting nature is essential to our existence.

Mongabay: You often talk about how the ocean isn’t the same ocean that it was several decades ago. Do you think it is possible to turn back the clock? Or do we need to live in a new reality?

Sylvia Earle: If we do nothing, things will continue to decline. We cannot go back to what it was, but we can make things better than they would be if we just sat around and did nothing. So, of course, I’m motivated. And yes, I see that actions count. In places that are protected, species like great whales are really coming back. For other species, they’re still here; there’s still hope, but we have to do more. Leatherback sea turtles are now generally protected, but they continue to decline because of entanglement with discarded fishing nets and fishing. Life in the sea is in trouble because we’re the most aggressive predators, taking far more than the systems can replenish. And that’s not just harming them — it’s harming us because the ocean and the planet are living systems. It’s held together by every element that has a role to play.

You look at your computer. What pieces can you take out of it? Where’s the excess? There isn’t any excess. Nature has no excess. No waste, either. We have invented those concepts. In nature, there are some good years and not such good years, but there’s no excess for humans just to take in large amounts and expect that they will continue to exist. We’ve already eliminated thousands of species because we’ve taken, thinking that it’s OK, it’s a good thing. We can convert them to what we believe is useful. But in the end, what is useful is that we have a planet. That is what keeps us alive. Now, we have to return the favor.

Mongabay: What are the most urgent actions that need to be taken right now?

Sylvia Earle: Look in the mirror. And understand what those problems are. No one can solve all the problems, but everyone can do something. I sometimes say saving the planet is a team sport. It takes everyone to do what they have the capacity to do. But you can’t just sit around pointing fingers. Point the finger at yourself and say, “What have I got? Do I have a way with music, with numbers, with kids, with communicating in whatever way?” Whatever it is that you have a talent for. And everybody has something. There are no two humans alike. So just say, “What have I got? Who am I? And then what do I care about? What am I willing to do? What can I do? What am I capable of?” [Think about] the choices you make about what to eat, what to wear, where you put your energy and time. You not only can make a difference — everyone, everywhere, all the time makes a difference with how you spend your life. What are the conscious choices you’re making? To move things in the right direction, in a positive direction.

Mongabay: Do you think climate change is the most urgent thing to address?

Sylvia Earle: Climate change results from many factors — not just one thing. So, the climate is modified by carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. Climate is altered by what we’re doing to freshwater and the land, by taking wildlife out of the ocean by the ton — millions of tons of wildlife — by altering the carbon cycle. We’re disrupting the carbon-capturing mechanisms when we clear-cut a forest or disrupt those forests of the sea. These plankton systems are so sensitive to chemistry, ocean acidification, what we’re putting into the ocean, and what we’re taking out of the ocean.

If we went back a billion years, we would find a planet where you couldn’t breathe. There would be no trees, there’d be no birds, there’d be no fish. Dinosaurs did not yet exist a billion years ago. We’d be very lonely except for all the microbes — lots of them. There would be fungi and the whole categories of life, almost entirely microscopic. So, we wouldn’t recognize life as we know it. It’s taken a long time to get to this magnificent world that we take for granted. No flowers, butterflies, bees or humans, except in the last little bit of time. And throughout this long arc of history, we’re newcomers.

Mongabay: I want to talk to you about hope spots. Do you have a favorite one?

Sylvia Earle: It’s called the ocean, all of it. It’s called Earth. Earth in a universe that’s really not very friendly. I love the moon. I love Mars. I love the galaxy of places beyond the Earth. And then the little pieces that we have designated on the sea. We now have 160 places where champions have stepped forward and said “This is a place I care about. Here’s what I pledge to do to turn decline into recovery.” Sometimes, it’s an individual working with a community. Sometimes it’s a group of individuals working in a community with institutions, with partners. Sometimes they’re government partners, sometimes they’re families … whatever it takes. Every place is held together with all the others with this network of hope, leading to action and a higher degree of protection.

Mongabay: So, is it impossible for you to choose a favorite place? Is it like picking a favorite child?

Sylvia Earle: They’re all part of one child.

Mongabay: How are these hope spots helping to sustain ocean health and resilience?

Sylvia Earle: By enlisting a global network of individuals committed to changing the trajectory of decline to recovery. Everyone can do something, and maybe their greatest contribution is inspiring others to do what they’re doing. We need everyone to do what they can. We, at least, need a critical mass of individuals committed to caring for nature — land and sea — because it all ties together.

Mongabay: With so many pressures facing the ocean and world, many people are falling into eco-grief or eco-anxiety. Do you ever struggle with that?

Sylvia Earle: It would be easy to feel a sense of despair. But if you don’t look at the positive things happening and how action has turned to recovery … the bad guys win. No, we all lose. So everyone should do what they can. Make the choices about what to eat or not.

Eating wildlife from the ocean — I think that era is over. We don’t consume many songbirds, and it’s not just because there aren’t many songbirds to consume — we have come to look at them as having value beyond just a little bite of something to feed ourselves. Birds are really helping to make the planet habitable. Insects make the planet habitable. Trees, grass, wildflowers. The ocean keeps the world habitable. And it’s mostly the ocean — that’s where 97% of the biosphere exists. It’s where most of life on Earth exists. So, we have destroyed much of the land and creatures on the land in the last 200 years at an precedented rate, except at a time when a comet collided with Earth and brought about the extinction of dinosaurs.

We can choose not to do this. Or we can keep doing what we’ve been doing and take ourselves and all these other creatures to a very bad place, like the end. Or we can choose a sustained future. And the beauty of the 21st century is we have a choice. In the 22nd century, we will still have a choice, depending on what we do now or fail to do. We may use up the opportunity during this century. It’s happening — you see collapse all around us. Coral reefs may not exist past the middle of the century, no matter what we do, but we’ll give it a try by not taking lobsters, fish and sharks out of coral reefs … to help maintain their strengths. If we just let them be, and let them stay, the resilience of coral reefs is enhanced. When you take pieces out, they become more vulnerable. We somehow think that lobsters belong to us. But no — coral reefs need those lobsters. They’re part of the system. We take them away, and you break the links and the integrity of the system.

Mongabay: What do lobsters do for coral reefs? How do they interact with coral reefs?

Sylvania Earle: A coral reef is not just the corals. It’s the little shrimp that live there and are cleaner fish for the fish that come by to get the parasites taken off. The parrot fish chew on the algae and put nutrients back, including calcareous [algae]. The white sand you see on beaches — it’s largely from the fish that take bites out of the dead coral where the algae are growing. That [sand] enables seagrasses to find a place to get enough of the sediment created by the parrot fish. It’s a whole system. The lobsters feed on a number of things, but among those things are little snails that feed on the coral. If you take away the lobsters, there’s a proliferation of the snails that have a heavier impact grazing on the corals, opening the way for disease to set in.

If you take the taxi cabs out of a city, take the garbage collectors away, and take the doctors away, you start dismembering a city. The city is not just the buildings; the coral reefs are not just the corals. Everything is connected. Humans come in [to the ocean] and strip out what we think we want, and we leave devastation behind. We leave a vulnerable system. And we’ve removed the sharks; we’ve removed the grouper; we’ve taken away the parrotfish; we’ve taken away the shrimp; we’ve taken away the octopus, you take away … this fabric of life that has developed literally over hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. We do know what to do now … it’s to show some restraint to stop the killing, start the caring, and watch for good things to happen.

Mongabay: Many efforts are being made to restore coral, seagrass and oysters. Is this having a positive effect?

Sylvia Earle: It’s good, but the best action is to save systems that are intact. Restored reef requires thousands of interacting pieces. You know, a computer is not just the case. It’s all the little bits inside. Like in a forest, you can plant trees, but we don’t plant the microbes, we don’t put the birds back, we don’t put the insects back. If there is a healthy system nearby that can repopulate some of these critical elements, we can start by planting trees. That would help if we put shovelfuls of earth from a healthy system to give the microbes a jumpstart. It’s not just trees; it’s the whole system.

Just as planting trees does help to restore forests, it takes time. The same is true with planting seagrasses, planting mangroves, even some efforts to restore kelp, and certainly coral restoration … but you have to really know what you’re doing. You can plant trees in the wrong place. You think, “Oh, it’s a tree,” but palm oil trees aren’t a source of restoration. There was a thought that punk trees, Melaleuca, would be good to plant in Florida because they grow fast. It’s an Australian tree, in the first place. You get greenery, but they take over and displace the natural vegetation, and that’s not a good thing. You’ve released a monster, basically. Even trees that are native to a country may not be planted in the right places for getting the desired restoration. So you need to try to do everything you can to think like an ecosystem, to think like a tree, think like a whale, think like a coral reef. Do everything you can to get up to speed on what is known. Try not to cause more trouble than good.

Mongabay: You said before that we still have time. But what makes you think that we still have time to turn things around?

Sylvia Earle: Because I see actions. And we can still breathe. But I’m mindful of the reality that scientists are doing their utmost to measure what keeps Earth habitable. What are the boundaries that, if we exceed them, send us spinning off in a different, bad direction? Excess carbon dioxide; pollution; the damage that we [inflict on] Earth’s freshwater systems; the loss of the diversity of life that makes all systems more vulnerable and makes us more vulnerable; the loss of insects not just for pollination but food; the migrations of birds …

We are just beginning to see how tightly coupled all of life is. This includes the discovery in my lifetime about how we are populated with microbes that we have to keep healthy. When things work well, our microbes are in harmony with our body. When we eat the wrong things and get sick, our microbial system is disrupted. Sometimes, it can recover; sometimes, we die due to the disruption of our microbial system, which has tremendous influence. Even the ability to discover the microbial world has mostly happened in the last 200 years. We are living longer and better because of the knowledge that we now have about how our bodies work, how we can cure illnesses that are sometimes generated by microbes that are not too friendly to us, or ones that are friendly for a while but when they get out of whack, they can overwhelm the natural harmony. We’re the luckiest humans ever to arrive and get more knowledge at a faster rate than ever before because of connecting the dots and bits of information that lived in silos until we had the capacity, as we have in the last 50 years, to communicate and to engage technology like computers to be able to crunch numbers, look for patterns and see what eventually we might see when you get enough human intellectual brainpower together and if you get the data and information. We are gathering data from high in the sky, from deep within the water column in the ocean, in ways we could not do before — and we have computers to assist. Good news or not such good news but … imagine if we did not know that we’re in trouble. We can only fix a problem if you know you’ve got a problem.

Mongabay: Sylvia, what gives you hope?

Sylvia Earle: The superpower of knowing. I think it’s simple. The kids of today are armed with knowledge that did not and could not exist before right about now. No one had been to the moon when I was a child or the deepest parts of the ocean. We have the best chance we’ll ever have right now to change this trajectory of decline to recovery. It can only get better with us being proactive and with the actions that are now possible because we know not only what the problems are, but also what to do to fix them. And number one is to save what remains of the library of life. We dare not mine the deep sea — it would represent such a colossal loss and damage to the systems which are still in pretty good shape. We’ve got to stop industrial fishing because we’re just stripping the ocean of life. It wasn’t possible until now to cause such havoc and damage. But we can also be the cure. Whales can’t fix this. Elephants can’t. Dogs, cats and horses are really smart, but they can’t fix this problem. What gives me hope is the kids coming along and the knowledge that’s changing the way people think. Maybe it’s not as fast as it should be, but it is accelerating.

We have the high seas treaty. We have nations stepping up right here at the [Our Ocean] conference where we’re speaking; nations are making pledges. Like I came directly from the Dominican Republic, where the president and ministers got together and I witnessed the signature that really affirms more than 30% of the ocean is highly or fully protected. It’s going to be a challenge to enforce it. But you can’t enforce what doesn’t exist. Nations have to make those commitments. And then get busy.

Mongabay: On the subject of hope again, what would you say to someone struggling to find a sense of hope?

Sylvia Earle: Just sit back and look at what is now known. Think about how much has been discovered, even within the past year, even in your lifetime, however old or young you are. That should give you a feeling of excitement that we are on a fast track for learning every day what the problems are, what the solutions are, and what everyone can do to shift in a positive direction. And the fact that kids are motivated. If you’re a kid, be glad you’re a 21st-century kid. Imagine what you now know that gives you a chance to be part of an era. You can be the heroes for all who follow.

We are at a crossroads. And your power exceeds the power of anyone who has gone before because of the knowledge that now exists. So, seize value rather than sink into despair; just consider that you are alive. That in itself is a miracle. Consider what it takes, what it has taken to create you — your existence. When you think of all of the factors that could mean that you don’t exist, it should cause you to say, “Hey, who am I? What am I doing here? What can I do to make my time matter? How can I seize this miracle of life and be meaningful?” You’ve got something, whoever you are, that nobody else has. Just be glad that you have a chance to exist and do something with a precious gift called life.

Banner image: Sylvia Earle speaking at the Our Ocean Conference in Athens. Image courtesy of Our Ocean Conference.

Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay’s Ocean Desk.

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Climate Change, Climate Change And Coral Reefs, Conservation, Coral Reefs, Environment, Interviews, Marine Biodiversity, Marine Conservation, Marine Ecosystems, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Crisis, Ocean Warming, Oceans, Women in conservation, Women In Science

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