biologist explorer lecturer scientist author
Sylvia Alice (Reade) Earle was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey on August 30, 1935. She is the daughter of Lewis Reade and Alice Freas (Richie) Earle. Both parents had an affinity for the outdoors and encouraged her love of nature after the family moved to the west coast of Florida. However, Earle pointed out, while her parents totally supported her interest in biology, they also wanted her to get her teaching credentials and learn to type, "just in case. "
Earle enrolled at Florida State University and received her Bachelor of Science degree in the spring of 1955. That fall she entered the graduate program at Duke University and obtained her master's degree in botany the following year.
The Gulf of Mexico became a natural laboratory for Earle's work. Her master's dissertation, a detailed study of algae in the Gulf, is a project she still follows. She has collected more than 20.000 samples. "When I began making collections in the Gulf, it was a very different body of water than it is now-the habitats have changed. So I have a very interesting baseline," she noted in Scientific American.
Sylvia accepted a position as resident director of the Cape Haze Marine Laboratories in Sarasota in 1966. The following year, she moved to Massachusetts to accept dual roles as research scholar at the Radcliffe Institute and research fellow at the Farlow Herbarium, Harvard University, where she was named a researcher in 1975.
Earle moved to San Francisco in 1976 to become a research biologist and curator of the California Academy of Sciences. That same year, she also was named a fellow in botany at the Natural History Museum at the University of California. Although her academic career could have kept her totally involved, her first love was the sea and the life within it.
In 1970, Earle and four other oceanographers lived in an underwater chamber for fourteen days as part of the government-funded Tektite II Project, designed to study undersea habitats.
Earle, who has logged more than 6.000 hours under water, is the first to decry America's lack of research money being spent on deep-sea studies, noting that of the world's five deep-sea manned submersibles (those capable of diving to 20.000 feet or more), the U. S. has only one, the Sea Cliff.
In 1993, Earle worked with a team of Japanese scientists to develop the equipment to send first a remote, then a manned submersible to 36,000 feet. Earle also plans to lead the $10 million deep ocean engineering project, Ocean Everest, that would take her to a similar depth.
In addition to publishing numerous scientific papers on marine life, Earle is a devout advocate of public education regarding the importance of the oceans as an essential environmental habitat.
She is currently the president and chief executive officer of Deep Ocean Technology and Deep Ocean Engineering in Oakland, California, as well as the coauthor of Exploring the Deep Frontier: The Adventure of Man in the Sea and sole author of Sea Change: A Message of the Ocean, published in 1995.
In 1992, Earle founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research (DOER Marine) to further advance marine engineering. The company, now run by Earle's daughter, Elizabeth, designs, builds, and operates equipment for deep-ocean environments.
Since 1998, Earle has been a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. She is sometimes called "Her Deepness" or "The Sturgeon General."
From 1998 to 2002 Sylvia led the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a five-year program sponsored by the National Geographic Society and funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund to study the United States National Marine Sanctuary.
In 2010, at The Hague International Model United Nations Conference, Earle gave a 14-minute speech in front of 3.500 delegates and United Nations ambassadors.
In July 2012, Earle led an expedition to NOAA's Aquarius underwater laboratory, located off Key Largo, Florida. The expedition, entitled "Celebrating 50 Years of Living Beneath The Sea," commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Jacques Cousteau's Conshelf I project and investigated coral reefs and ocean health. Mark Patterson co-led the expedition with Earle. Their aquanaut team also included underwater filmmaker D.J. Roller and oceanographer M. Dale Stokes.
Earle made a cameo appearance in the daily cartoon strip Sherman's Lagoon in the week starting September 17, 2012, to discuss the closing of the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory.
Earle is a devout advocate of public education regarding the importance of the oceans as an essential environmental habitat. Sylvia A. Earle is a former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a leading American oceanographer. She was among the first underwater explorers to make use of modern self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) gear, and identified many new species of marine life.
With her former husband, Graham Hawkes, Earle designed and built a submersible craft that could dive to unprecedented depths of 3, 000 feet.
Earle was a leader of the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, council chair for the Harte Research Institute for the Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Ocean in Google Earth.
In January 2018, the Seattle Aquarium granted its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Earle, and renamed the Seattle Aquarium Medal in her honor.
(Dazzling photographs combine with inspiring insights from...)
(Detailing a mysterious realm thats as vital to our exist...)
(Photographer and conservationist Bryant Austin's breathta...)
(This book tie-in to National Geographic's ambitious 5-yea...)
( This engaging memoir presents one man's lifelong love o...)
(Takes young readers on an informative and colorfully phot...)
(Enhanced with parent/teacher notes and vivid photos, this...)
(Earle takes children on an undersea journey to explore an...)
Quotations:
"With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live. "
"People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet-we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something. "
"We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do. "
"The oceans deserve our respect and care, but you have to know something before you can care about it. "
"We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth. 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. "
"Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks. "
"Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea. "
"Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they've spent time in and around the ocean, and they've personally seen the beauty, the fragility, and even the degradation of our planet's blue heart. "
"With respect to the ocean being the heart of our blue planet: We are often asked, 'How much protection is enough?' We can only answer with another question: How much of your heart is worth protecting?"
"When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots. "
"I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it. "
"I hope that someday we will find evidence that there is intelligent life among humans on this planet. "
"With care and protection, with safe havens in the ocean, there is still a good chance that we can turn things around. "
Sylvia A. Earle was married Graham Hawkes, an engineer and submersible designer.
