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Interview: Sylvia Earle Discusses
Restoring the Oceans to Health

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle has spent nearly half a century exploring the world’s oceans and breaking numerous barriers in deep-sea exploration, including holding the record walking untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth — 1,250 feet — than anyone ever has. In her new book, The World is Blue, Earle describes the two-pronged assault on the seas — humanity’s extraction of vast amounts of marine life, while at the same time pouring into the oceans huge quantities of pollutants and carbon dioxide — and also discusses ways to bring the oceans back from the brink. Chief among these, Earle says in an interview with Yale Environment 360, are the creation of a global network of marine reserves and developing a sustainable system of aquaculture that farms herbivores, such as tilapia, and not top-of-the-line predators such as salmon and tuna. Earle believes the world’s oceans can still be redeemed, but only through swift and decisive action. “We either get to choose by conscious action or by default... thinking somebody else will look after this,” she says. “But nobody else will take care of these issues.”
Click here to read the full interview.

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