Oceanographer and scientist Dr. Sylvia Earle has made protecting the Earth’s oceans her life’s mission. Watch Dr. Earle talk about her newest initiative Mission Blue, a program dedicated to protecting oceanic life:
Mission Blue, orchestrated by the nonprofit Sylvia Earle Alliance (SEA), is a global initiative formed in response to Earle’s 2009 TED Prize wish and a subsequent expedition to the Galapagos Islands along with 100 oceanic leaders.
“The wish I made was basically to do everything possible to ignite public support, public awareness to be of value to the ocean,” Earle told genConnect, “and to implement networks of what I call hope spots — protected areas — that give us some hope by making peace with nature – land, air and certainly ocean, and the fabric of life itself. It will give us a better chance than anything else I can imagine to have an enduring future within the natural systems that keep us alive.”
While things may look fine from on land, our ocean’s systems are changing because of environmental and human pressures – and they eventually will get to a breaking point, causing havoc both beneath the sea and on ground, Earle says.
“The ocean is changing and it’s changing at least as fast as anything we have observed on land but it is not as obvious to us because people don’t see what is on the surface,” Earle said. “The world is changing and the ocean is governing that change.”
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