Marine biologist hopes to hook more people on ocean awareness
By Jaclyn Lipp, Staff Writer
January 14, 2007 | 7:59 p.m.
The closest many of us get to the ocean now is picturing a warm beach through chattering teeth, but soon we may not even have spring break to dream about as waves of alarming information about the ocean crash a bit closer to home.
The highly respected marine biologist and lecturer Dr. Sylvia Earle graced the Templeton Blackburn Memorial Auditorium's stage Thursday night to touch on the importance of defying the downfall of the world's oceans and to relive some of the important points in her wide-reaching career.
Earle has devoted much of her life to exploring the depths of the ocean and studying its wildlife. With a certain sadness in her voice, she noted that, today, half of the world's coral reefs are gone or in trouble, and 90 percent of the big fish are depleted in the sea.
“We have perhaps gone too far; we can't go back, we can only go forward armed with knowledge and try to do better,” Earle said about these alarming ocean statistics, which are partly due to over fishing and other varying human causes.
One may wonder exactly why we should be worried by that information, and to this, Earle claims these undersea creatures are extremely important to the way our world works. The ocean is changing for the worse, and she thinks we ought to do everything in our power to take care of what we have left. A strong point was made that humankind is always searching for signs of water on other distant planets, when we should really be focusing on the resources right in front of us.
“We need to secure an enduring place for ourselves in the natural world, which just happens to be mostly blue,” Earle said.
The well-known oceanographer can still recall how the exhilaration of the wildness of the ocean first grabbed her attention after she was knocked off her feet by a wave at the age of 3. She would follow the call of the ocean to many adventurous moments throughout her career. One of her more famous accomplishments in the 1970s was leading a five-woman aquanaut research expedition called Tektite II for two weeks of living 50 feet underwater. Besides her important research in the project, it broke the norm of those times in which men dominated the field and gained much media attention. She still holds the record for the deepest untethered solo dive at 3,000 feet in 1985. More recently in the '90s, she was a major participant in the Sustainable Seas Expeditions program, which sought to explore much of the ocean directly surrounding North America.
Senior Shaylyn Bennett attended the lecture and said she found it “very encouraging that professional marine biologists are making an effort to reach college students and actually solve some of the problems today.”
“College students are the ones that are learning and going out to careers; we have the potential to reach a large audience,” Bennett said.
Earle mirrored this statement. Students in school can also do something for the ocean, Earle explained, saying that every single person affects the people around them, and every movement has to get started somewhere, with something small. She referred to a woman in Texas who started picking up trash on the beach, which led to a small group of people helping her do this once a week, and eventually it has expanded to groups all over the world. “Little things catch on and become an avalanche. It’s wrong to think you don't have power [to change things],” Earle concluded.
---