Dr. Sylvia Earle, nicknamed “Her Deepness” and “The Sturgeon General,” is a world-renowned oceanographer known for her many records and achievements. She has led over 80 expeditions, lived underwater for two weeks, published over 100 scientific papers and was the first woman to serve as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to name a few. Beyond her expertise in marine biology, Dr. Earle is an advocate for our oceans. She is continuing her work as the inaugural Climate Communicator in Residence for the Center for Climate Journalism and Communication Residence at USC. Dr. Earle shared her thoughts on a variety of topics, from what it feels like to recognize the faces of fish to the power each of us holds to save our planet.
In 1979 you dove 1,250 feet underwater without a tether and walked freely on the ocean floor for two and a half hours. What did your first step feel like?
It was more of a stumble than a step. I was lashed onto the front of a little submarine and I had to release the belt. I was like the hood ornament in a way, though it’s a platform actually. Then I had to actually walk off in this big metal suit that weighs about 1,000 pounds, but in the ocean because of the air displacement, it only weighs about 60 pounds, so that I can move. But to move, you had to kind of walk like you imagine a bear. And it was balanced such that even though I kind of stumbled as I stepped off the front of the submarine, I did not fall down. I wanted to fall down to get my nose closer to the bottom, because I was upright, and I’m not very tall, but they actually had to take the segment out of the legs so that I could fit, so that my toes could touch the bottom of the tube. It looks like an astronaut suit, if you haven’t seen the JIM suit, named after the first person who was willing to try it back in the 1920s. This was a spiffed up, modern version. It was such an exhilarating experience, to be that deep, be able to breathe and to stay for two and a half hours, then come back to the surface without having to decompress as a diver. Breathing a compressed mix of gasses going more than 1,000 feet down. I would have to do many hours of decompression, even if I stayed for a short time. If I stayed a few hours, it would take a couple of weeks for decompression because my tissues would be saturated and at those shallow depths, I’ve done it. I’ve been saturated, on ten different occasions, living underwater, but not at 1,000 feet or 1,200 feet, just at like 20 meters or so. Then, if you’ve been there for 24 hours, even at a shallow depth, your tissues are fully saturated. So at 60 feet, about 20 meters, it takes about 16 hours to get rid of the excess nitrogen, but for 1,000 feet, it would take more like ten days, two weeks. So I feel so privileged to be there breathing one atmosphere, no decompression. It’s just like being in an airplane or underwater taxi.
You’re truly a role model, especially for women in oceanography. In 1970, you led the first all-female team of women on this two-week experiment living underwater as part of the Tektite II Project. What did it take to make that institutional breakthrough, and what were some of the most striking images in your memory, even today?
Well, I never intended to do anything that would be exceptional. I was at Harvard at the time and there was a notice on the bulletin board that said if you are a scientist with a project that you would like to submit for the opportunity to live underwater for a couple of weeks—and this is during the time that astronauts were going high in the sky. The thought of being an aquanaut, to go deep in the ocean and have time to actually get acquainted with the ocean for more than just a short 20-minute passport that you have as a diver. You can go repeatedly time and again on the short passport. But just to be able to stay, for 24 hours, if you wanted. We were able to spend eight, 10, 12 hours in a 24-hour period actually in the water, and you could go back to the same place, not just for a few minutes, but you could get to know that moray eel that lived in that place, or the barracuda that would come and hang out. You could get to see those five angelfish that stayed together and swam together. You could see their faces! I didn’t know, I guess I did know, but I didn’t really appreciate that fish have faces and that you can tell them apart the way you can tell cats and dogs and people apart, and that their behavior is different. And they’re curious. And I kind of knew that fish were curious because of being in the water diving. But when they start following you around, when you’re, you know, cruising around the reef. And we used rebreathers, these are systems that don’t create a lot of bubbles and are quiet. So they’re not as intrusive as SCUBA with these big beautiful bubbles and noise that come from using SCUBA. It was a transformative experience for me to have that gift of time in one place for two weeks, and I’ve done it now ten times in different places, but that first time --- oh, [chuckling] none of us, well, they did not expect women to apply. A lot of women applied to NASA to be astronauts. But at that time, 1970, there were no women astronauts. They just said no. And nobody bothered to say no on the [aquanaut] application form. So when some of us did [apply], unlike the women applicants for being astronauts, the head of the program for this Tektite project, I think he probably had a good relationship with his mom, had a good marriage, and he respected women. When asked about hiring female aquanauts he said, ‘Well, half the fish are female, I guess we could put up with a few women.’ And that just changed everything, not only for those of us who love to go exploring the ocean but because NASA was one of the chief sponsors, they wanted to see how the behavior of people underwater would be when they’re isolated from contact with those who could help. And so the project was crafted to simulate what it would be like when you’re in space. They say that the success of the women’s team significantly helped pave the way for letting women actually be astronauts. It was 15 years or so before they allowed women in space. So I don’t know why it took so long because look at the track record of those women who have not just [gone] in the sky, but everywhere. It’s a transformative time.
In your career, you have seen the world change in a lot of ways, both in climate and in the diversity of those entering the field. How would you describe these changes?
Well, there’s a lot of good news and there’s a lot of not-so-good news. I think on the positive side, we’ve learned more probably in the last half-century, certainly in my lifetime. I think it’s safe to say we’ve learned more during the last century than during all preceding human history, partly because there are more of us, more minds, more observers. But we also have the power of technology to communicate. Go back to, say, the 1700s or 1800s, somebody discovers something. How do you get the word out to people all over the world? Gradually, some of these discoveries did, you know, get through the population. But even now, it’s hard to get people to get up to speed with what we know about the climate. There are new kids coming over all the time, and I don’t know, they have to learn from scratch, but that’s part of the good news. Generally speaking, 10-year-olds of today are knowledgeable about so much that no one could know until right about now. No one, when I was a child, had seen Earth from space. No one knew what was going on in the deepest parts of the ocean. It was thought there might not be much living down there. Now we know the diversity and abundance of life, even in the deepest parts of the ocean, are still just staggering. A lot of it is very small, but that’s what makes the world go round. The little guys, the microbes, the small creatures that shape planetary chemistry make Earth habitable. We didn’t know about the microbes that live within us, that helped shape our digestion and help make us who we are, we just had no clue. There are more microbes within us than the cells that make up who we think we are. And that is just a big idea that we are an ecosystem, each of us. One concept. And it’s hard to look at any single animal because it’s true with trees that they have microbes living in the roots that make their existence possible, fungi as well as bacteria. We’re all linked together — Is it Carl Sagan who said ‘We’re all made of stardust?’ We’re all linked by some common elements of the universe. And these discoveries, these big ideas should make us so powerful, knowing what we know. At the same time that we’ve learned more, though, we’ve lost more. The power of destructive capacity – we’re a technology that cuts both ways. It can save us or it could destroy us. Our ability to kill, to destroy forests, to catch ocean wildlife on a scale that has never been possible before, and to market ocean wildlife, to market trees from one side of the world to the other. It’s never been possible before. To kill one another on a scale that has never been possible before. These are, on one hand, terrifying, but on the other hand, cause for hope. If we manage ourselves — we cannot really manage nature — but we can manage ourselves, with relationship to nature and find harmony. By listening to those who have had a long history in the place and have understood how to work with nature. You never take too much because if you do your kids, and even you, won’t survive if you kill all the animals that you rely on for food, if you cut all the trees that you rely on for your home. Now we’re beginning to tap into the ancient wisdom and respect people who’ve lived in places for a long time, incorporating that into the technologies that we now have, not only to solve problems, but to understand what we couldn’t see or know before, whether it’s with a microscope, telescope or submarines or whatever. But it’s the communication. It’s if we can get the information so we can see patterns, to see what works, to see what we should be doing and what we should not be doing. This is, I think I’m not alone in saying this, the sweet spot in time. We have the greatest power of knowing coupled with caring that there has ever been despite all the bad news about poverty, about disease, about war. It’s still the best time ever. We’re so lucky to be a 21st-century human being.
You have written for National Geographic, written books and created documentaries. How have you seen an impact on the public?
I really don’t have a measure. I don’t know. All I know is that I have to keep trying to share the view because I know that I’ve been privileged to be a witness, I’ve been privileged to be able to use technology that only became available on my watch and to see the changes. And you know, astronauts who have had the ability to go high in the sky, they come back, they want everybody to know what earth looks like in space, they’re just like catching people on the street. I feel the same way about going in the other direction, realizing that most of my species have not and probably never will get to go to places that I have seen and witnessed. And certainly, nobody can go back in time. But I can be a voice for the past and a voice for the future, because I know we can change in a positive way. I’ve seen it happen. I certainly know we can cause havoc. We can just be destructive. But I’ve seen the connection between humans and the rest of life on Earth begin to make a shift towards a greater empathy. And we really need greater capacity to see the world through the eyes of others, whether it’s whales or little krill in Antarctica or deep sea fish, and certainly through the eyes of other humans. To be and see the world like you’re that bird flying in the sky. What does the world look like? How do you spend your days and nights? Just, a different attitude. And maybe it’s because we’re feeling nature’s pain, inflicting pain on us through storms, through disease, through a warming planet that is not comfortable for our species, that we are being forced to ask questions. What’s happening? What can I do to restore safety for me, for my family, for the world? And the good news is we know what to do. We’ve got some answers. We know what’s causing the problems. Imagine if we did not know that polar ice is melting. Imagine if we did not know the correlation between burning fossil fuels and the warming of the planet. Imagine, imagine, imagine, if we did not know that viruses exist or that they’re causing problems, or that we’re causing the problems that cause the problems that we now have to cope with, in terms of spreading disease or spreading despair. We need to spread hope.
How can individuals interact and consume better to help our planet’s and ocean’s longevity and health?
Everyone, you know, I’m not in a position to tell anyone else what to do. But I can suggest you look in the mirror and ask that question of yourself. And look at the big questions. What can I do to shift from decline to recovery? Everybody can do something. You can make better choices. When you know, when you ask: so what is this carbon cycle thing? Okay, do your homework. Check it out. What does carbon have to do with climate? What do whales have to do with climate? What do krill in Antarctica have to do with climate? What do my habits of eating a tuna fish sandwich have to do with climate? You ask yourself. Start doing your homework and figure out what you can do. What choices can you make or what power do you have to turn from this, this time when you see wildlife collapsing, the fires, the warm warming climate? Okay, nobody can do it all, but you can do something. You can figure it out. It’s individual choices about what you eat, what you wear, how you travel, and maybe something special, like using your voice and using your way with numbers or your way with animals or, your way with kids to really be a powerhouse for change in the right direction.
Is there anything else that you want to add or you would like to leave us students with?
Absolutely. I think you should be excited about being a 21st-century human being, armed with more knowledge than has ever been possible before. You may not have it all running around in your head. Nobody does, but you have access to information and the ability through the communication that now exists for one person to really have a magnified impact. And if you think you have it, imagine if ten of you have it and come together. Or 20 or 50 and connect with people all over the world. This is a moment that has never been possible before and there’s still time. I mean, what we can do now that we can’t do 50 years from now because it’ll be too late to save things or to move things or to change things that are possible within your grasp right now. So get busy. Go for it. Do not give in to despair. Do not ... [have] the attitude of ‘you cannot do it.’ If you say ‘I can’t, there’s no hope’, then there’s no hope. But if you say, ‘I can do this, you can do that, somebody else over there ... ' You know, there is every reason to not imagine or believe or hope that you can. We can make this change, so let’s get busy.
Note: Some of the quotes have been edited for clarity with care.