Elite Traveler Winter 2019

INFLUENCE CONSERVATION

Sylvia Earle on protecting the ocean

Perhaps the most well-known — certainly the most fun —marine scientist, conservationist, aquanaut and oceanographer alive, Dr Sylvia Earle has tirelessly advocated for the ocean for over half a century. She speaks with Kristen Shirley about her incomparable career and why she still has hope for the oceans

"We have a long way to go before civilization and cultures around the world acknowledge with policies, with attitudes, with behavior, that the ocean keeps us alive"

The list of prestigious honors and world firsts is long for the petite oceanographer sitting in front of me. I meet Dr Sylvia Earle in Washington, DC during a busy week for science — the city is abuzz with the National Geographic Explorers Festival and the Rolex Awards for Enterprise — and she is undeniably the belle of the ball. Everywhere we go, people strive to say hello and to get a word in with Her Deepness, the first person — not woman, person — to set foot on the deep-ocean floor; the first female Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; a fellow at Harvard University; a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence; and founder of the nonprofit organization Mission Blue. People are drawn to her contagious energy, zest for life and deep empathy for all living things — and maybe they want to hear what it’s like to stand on the ocean floor, 1,250 ft deep, in an atmospheric diving suit (a JIM suit). Lucky for me, Earle is happy to recount what it's like to sink over a thousand feet untethered to the surface in her record-breaking dive. “As you descend, it gets bluer and bluer and bluer, and you lose the gold, you lose the red, you lose the orange. And it’s a blue... it’s an indigo everything. You know, if you looked in the mirror at even 100 feet, but especially as you go deeper, you’re blue. If you have lipstick on, it’s blue. When you get down to about 650 ft... you can still see light above, and it is like a deep twilight. And you begin to see bioluminescence, these little sparkles. When you get down to where I was, at about 1,250 ft with the JIM suit, it’s almost, but not totally, completely dark.

What I could see after my eyes became accustomed to what little bit of light there was, you could see it’s kind of gray. In this direction, it’s really black.” When she touched the coral on the ocean floor, “they would just burst with blue fire.” If more people heard her stories, they would care deeply about the ocean, so crucial to our planet’s survival. For Earle, the lack of public awareness is the biggest challenge facing the oceans. She says, “Ignorance is killing the ocean. While formal designation of protection helps, what is most important is getting to the minds and hearts of people about why they should care.” The ocean’s seemingly impenetrable depths can be frightening. Maybe that’s why the public cares more about space exploration than the oceans, and maybe it explains why Neil Armstrong is a national hero while Earle works quietly in the background — though both were first to leave their footprints on an untouched frontier. Earle says several astronauts have told her that when they return from a mission, the importance of our planet is put into a new perspective for them. “They all say how they look at life differently, that when they see the vastness of the universe, here is this miracle. This blue planet that’s alive. The moon — there’s no life unless we take it along. There may be life on Mars; there’s water there, not much, and the temperature extremes are much greater than we have here. This is a just-right planet.” Sadly, the blue on our just-right planet is in crisis. “We have a long way to go before civilization and cultures around the world acknowledge with policies, with attitudes, with behavior, that the

ocean keeps us alive. And that we have to turn things around and take care of the ocean,” Earle says. Earle has dedicated her life to ocean conservation. Now with Mission Blue she is empowering the people, allowing them to nominate special marine areas as Hope Spots. The organization works to raise awareness, advise in a scientific capacity, engage the community and create partnerships to help protect these areas. She's seen firsthand that the best way to make something happen is to make people care — and they care most about what’s in their own communities. Earle knows the importance of personal experience; her childhood spent at the New Jersey seaside, then growing up near the beach in Florida, cemented her love for the ocean and its strange creatures. She tells me that, as a child, she was fascinated with horseshoe crabs. “I just thought they were beautiful, wondrous, curious creatures. And there were adults who thought they were scary

From left Hammerhead sharks at a Mission Blue Hope Spot; Dr Sylvia Earle

Photos Kip Evans and Todd Brown

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