Sylvia Earle Interview (page: 6 / 6) Undersea Explorer	Print Interview

You feel that in a lot of ways we have neglected the ocean. We've polluted it, and we've also taken it for granted.

Sylvia Earle: As human beings, we are basically terrestrial. It's sometimes easy -- easy for some people apparently -- to forget that planetary health, planetary wealth, is very directly linked to the health of the oceans. To the extent that we take care of the sea, we will help insure our ultimate survival and well being. To the extent that we ignore this, forget about it, become complacent, or believe that it is so infinite that it can take care of itself, we are in trouble. We are in trouble now, unless we deliberately take actions to take care of the nature of the sea, and make sure these systems continue to operate as they have for millions of years. We sit right now with this incredible inheritance. The planet is thought to be on the order of 4.6 billion years in the making. Creatures that we take for granted, such as lobsters, have been around for something like 500 million years. Sharks for 300 million years. Dinosaurs became extinct long ago, something on the order of 65 million years ago, but these other creatures, with a more distinguished past and history, are still around. If we saw a dinosaur walking down the street, we would be so grateful that they were still here., and we would protect this dinosaur as an example of what life was all about that preceded us. We would want to know everything about those crazy creatures. Oh! If only we could find even one, how we would respect that marvelous creation. But we are so casual about things like lobsters, or sharks. Or about things that I grew up with, the horse shoe crabs that have persisted through something on the order of more than five hundred million years in a relatively unchanged form. And now there are only five species left. They are very vulnerable to what we do or don't do. It could be that in our lifetime, we will see the demise of these ancient creatures. We are already perilously close to doing that with many creatures in the sea.
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I don't think there is any known shark species that has gone extinct through the direct effects of humankind, but it could happen, just as it happened with many creatures that seemed to be infinitely available on land. Think how many passenger pigeons there were. Think of how close we came to eliminating the buffalo. It could still happen. But at least there are some buffalo around, and they seem to be thriving under our close scrutiny and our care. Sharks haven't yet reached our minds as creatures worthy of our respect, let alone horse shoe crabs, or lobsters as worthy of anything but being served with lemon slices and butter. They are very tasty, I agree, but there are other values, just as we have come to look at other creatures for more than just what use we can make of them. In fact, the whole world is of immense value to us. Just try to create one of these lovely creatures. Nobody knows how to make a dinosaur. To put one back, to start from scratch, even if we had all the ingredients, how do we create these things? It's a wealth of knowledge that we take for granted. Even beyond that, it's this interacting living system to which we are tied, that we are utterly dependent upon for our health. Donald Johanson is absolutely right when he shows concern about how detached we are becoming from our roots. People who grow up close to the land, or close to the sea, can feel it, they see themselves reflected in the lives of all these other creatures, and realize that we are a part of this interacting system.

As a biologist, there are two things that I have come to see as the most wondrous aspects of living creatures. One is that no two are alike. It isn't just that there are no two human beings -- but that in itself is remarkable enough. Think about all the human beings that have ever been on the planet, billions, but no two alike. Not even identical twins are alike. There are subtleties that set them apart. Go beyond that, and think about all the other kinds of creatures that have ever been. There aren't any two that are precisely, identically, exactly, molecularly -- behavioral, or otherwise -- exactly alike. Mosquitoes look alike to us, but there are no two that are identical. Every fish is different. I don't mean just the 25,000 different species of fish -- but every individual herring is different from every other one. So that is one aspect of life that is just stunning. The other part is the flip side of it: the common ground that all life has. We see basic physiological patterns repeated time and time again. The process of digestion: lobsters do it, horseshoe crabs do it, sharks do it, we do it, mosquitoes do it. Much of the chemistry is the same. Why else would our experiments with white mice be so relevant? They are mammals, but lift yourself out of mammals and look at birds. Lift yourself out of vertebrates, and look at other divisions in animals that are distinctively different, and you see patterns repeated over and over again. This is why, among other reasons, we ought to be concerned about pesticides. Things that aren't good for living things are probably affecting us. They might not kill us, but it isn't without some impact. We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth.
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As we learn how we fit into the greater scheme of things, and begin to understand how the system works, we can plan ahead, we can use the resources responsibly, to show some respect for this inheritance that goes back 4.6 billion years.

Why should we be so arrogant as to think that we know it all? Do we think we can improve on these incredible living systems? Why shouldn't we be prepared to put our arms around and embrace as much wilderness as still remains, as an example of how it has been done over the eons, right? We have come in and wiggled the system, lurched the system, destroyed whole chunks of the system. We are living in the midst of this big experiment. Things are rapidly changing. Is global warming a phenomenon that is real? It appears to be. What are the consequences? How do we fix it? The best chance we have for understanding and for doing something about it so that we can have a future at least as good as the dinosaurs, and maybe as good as the horseshoe crabs of the world, or the sharks, it will come because we have some models still remaining in the wilderness ocean, in the wilderness rain forest, in the grasslands that somehow have managed to remain through this vast, almost unimaginably long period of time. We newcomers have been around here maybe five million years, this little thin skin of time in the long history of the planet. But we're endowed with this special insight, this intelligence. If we are really intelligent, we will learn that we are a part of this system, and not apart from it.
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Thank you so much for speaking with us today. It was wonderful.

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