Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
Sylvia EarleRead
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.
Interpretation
Those who experience the ocean firsthand often become its greatest defenders due to their understanding of its beauty and vulnerabilities.
Sylvia Earle highlights that the unique experiences of scuba divers and surfers lead them to become passionate advocates for ocean conservation. Their direct interactions with the ocean reveal its wonders and remind them of its delicate state, fostering a personal connection that prompts them to protect it.
In practice
In a speech at a conservation conference, I quoted Sylvia Earle to emphasize the importance of firsthand experience in advocating for the ocean.
Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.
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.
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet-as if the ocean somehow doesn't matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean...We are learning otherwise.
No water, no life. No blue, no green.
I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,- Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.
Animals are our younger brothers and sisters, also on the ladder of evolution but a few rungs lower. It is an important part of our responsibilities to help them in their ascent, and not to retard their development by cruel exploitation of their helplessness.
Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it - they're busy dealing with it.
There is no bandit so powerful as Nature._x000D_ _x000D_ The interaction of the positive and the negative principles, which produces the visible universe._x000D_ _x000D_ In the whole universe there is no escape from it.
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