00:00:06
Matt Waters: Hey there dive buddies, and welcome to the

00:00:07
show. If you'd have told me last year that I will be talking to

00:00:10
my next guest, I would have thought you were barking mad or

00:00:12
suffering from decompression sickness. However, the scuba

00:00:16
podcast has come a long way since my dining room table and

00:00:18
lockdown. I am extremely excited, honored and humbled to

00:00:21
be talking all things oceanic with a woman who epitomizes the

00:00:24
words conservation and exploration, but also the show's

00:00:28
title as one of the greatest of all time scuba diving pioneers,

00:00:32
and the personal hero of mine. Dr. Sylvia Earle is National

00:00:35
Geographics explorer in residence known by many other

00:00:38
names such as a deepness, the living legend, and the hero the

00:00:42
planet to name just a few. Sylvia Earle, Welcome to the

00:00:46
show. Thank you for joining me today.

00:00:49
Sylvia Earle: Oh, great to be on board.

00:00:51
Matt Waters: On board. I love it.

00:00:53
Sylvia Earle: For real!

00:00:56
Matt Waters: How are things in the us right now? Because I

00:00:59
mean, obviously travels really restricted. So there's that

00:01:02
limited the work that you do?

00:01:04
Sylvia Earle: Well, it has kept me drier than I like, but it has

00:01:10
given me a chance to literally dive into trying to figure out

00:01:17
the latest updates on the state of the ocean. That resulted in a

00:01:24
book that's about to come out in November, about about the ocean,

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the past, present, and so educated guesses about what the

00:01:36
future will be based on or failed to do.

00:01:42
Matt Waters: I thank you for the copy as well. It's a beautiful

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book and so much information in the fantastic

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Sylvia Earle: National Geographic, Let's see. "Ocean a

00:01:53
global Odyssey" I should be able to remember the title.

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Matt Waters: I love the simplicity of the cover as well,

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you've got the angel fish on the front?

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Sylvia Earle: Well,that's the I think on the introductory page,

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the cover is actually just an amazing photograph of Brazilian

00:02:16
sufficient one small figure that represents a diver. It's a great

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picture.

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Matt Waters: That's the picture I'm missing. I've got the angel

00:02:26
fish.

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Sylvia Earle: You've got the introductory pages. Yes.

00:02:30
Matt Waters: Yeah, that's beautiful. We'll delve deeper

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into the book in a little while. But let's talk about you for a

00:02:38
little bit. So I've kind of followed you for a number of

00:02:42
years, as you may guess. I'd like to know from yourself,

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you've had many, many fantastic moments in your life. But are

00:02:53
there any defining moments that stand out to you?

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Sylvia Earle: I suppose, first time I took the plunge, it was a

00:03:01
defining moment. I just could not imagine that you could

00:03:08
actually breathe underwater. Until I tried it. Like that it

00:03:15
was so easy that I got truly rapidly hooked on the concept.

00:03:24
And I've been doing it ever since that was back in 1953. We

00:03:29
had two words of instruction, I was with eight students taking a

00:03:32
class in marine biology at Florida State University summer

00:03:37
class, and that we had two of the first scuba units in the

00:03:44
country. There were no diving organizations except the US

00:03:50
Navy. Put, we didn't qualify for that. We watched what the fish

00:03:58
were doing. And to follow their example, except that they were

00:04:02
breathing underwater and now we could to

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Matt Waters: it's a marvelous concept, isn't it?

00:04:09
Sylvia Earle: It really is. There are limits obviously, but

00:04:12
we didn't know. Clearly them this we do know about what those

00:04:19
limits are that you can get into trouble with staying too long,

00:04:23
too deep, too much oxygen. And a lot of things that we just

00:04:30
learned by doing

00:04:32
Matt Waters: did you ever have any problems yourself.

00:04:36
Sylvia Earle: So far, so good. I've been involved with

00:04:39
decompressing a buddy after too many deep dives in succession in

00:04:48
trucker goon many years ago. But fortunately there was one of

00:04:54
these one person chambers that was available. But nobody

00:05:01
present to operate it. But the instructions were were taped on

00:05:06
the chamber. So, Chuck nicklin, who's great longtime friend and

00:05:14
diver together, we figured it out. Our victim, who is our

00:05:21
getting's. 1000s of hours of successful underwater, diving it

00:05:29
mazing photographer filmmaker, but we just he just stayed a

00:05:35
little bit too long, a little too deep. And tried to brush off

00:05:40
the symptoms at first, but nature doesn't pay an attention

00:05:45
to our rules. Yeah. So anyway, we is we successfully took him

00:05:51
down to 165 feet, kept him there for 11 hours. I mean, after we

00:06:02
we follow the rules, and got him back safely, back in the water

00:06:06
Two days later, good. Scientists, marine biologists,

00:06:14
compression nurses. Well, I really respect that. It having

00:06:24
the right training to undertake operating a chamber is is really

00:06:30
desirable. But we had no choice. All the right people were out of

00:06:36
town. So we did what we had to do.

00:06:40
Matt Waters: How did, you know you say it was right at the

00:06:43
start of scuba equipment being available for you to use? was

00:06:47
it? Was it just a chance of fortune that it was something

00:06:50
that was offered to the university? or How did it come

00:06:54
about?

00:06:55
Sylvia Earle: It was that creative scientist teacher,

00:07:02
Harold Humm, who just thought that it was logical that if you

00:07:09
want to explore the ocean, you should get into the ocean. So he

00:07:14
I'm not sure how he managed to procure two of the first units

00:07:19
with a double hose regulators with a big fat mouthpiece that I

00:07:25
can barely put it in my mouth. And we have a desco facemask

00:07:31
with air supplied from a surface compressor. We also tried that.

00:07:36
And we also had we had three methods, we use a diving helmet

00:07:41
that we just put on our shoulders and weights on our

00:07:44
feet in the round. or middle to walk around, we did not go Ultra

00:07:52
Deep. We stayed probably probably the deepest dives we

00:07:57
did during that summer of 1953, about 20 meters. And it was

00:08:04
later I guess, first deepish kinds of dives that I started

00:08:10
making were under the the flippers of Navy divers of

00:08:16
Panama City diving facility in Florida, they still have a

00:08:23
diving center there. But at the time, it was not with a high

00:08:29
level of security that is now imposed on military operations

00:08:32
everywhere. I was working on studying marine plants in the

00:08:37
Gulf of Mexico for my dissertation. And I traveled all

00:08:41
over down the coast. Sometimes with a buddy sometimes just on

00:08:45
my own because I don't know. Again, I fully respect and I

00:08:52
abide by the principles of safety. That buddy diving really

00:08:57
does save lives. But this early days, we didn't have all the

00:09:02
experience that now keeps people alive and enables us to go

00:09:08
safely deeper and stay longer than then we imagined would be

00:09:13
possible before. And so watching the Navy divers, and diving with

00:09:21
them offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and making a free us

00:09:26
ascent unintentionally. You might remember or may have heard

00:09:31
about the J valve that tanks were provided with it. You

00:09:38
breathe the air down to the point where you couldn't easily

00:09:42
breathe anymore and then you release the last five minutes of

00:09:45
air. So during that last five minutes, you you button things

00:09:50
up and came back to the surface. Now of course, you can measure

00:09:55
how much air you have in your tank. Imagine not knowing we

00:09:58
didn't know Yeah, how deep you are, we did not have pressure

00:10:02
gauges, or depth gauges, or

00:10:05
Matt Waters: and that nowadays it. So if you hit 50, PA, you've

00:10:08
got to go now so we just stay here until we run out of air and

00:10:14
then pull the lever and hope there's some more.

00:10:20
Sylvia Earle: Well, the good news is that we have

00:10:26
predecessors who've been out there lots of people doing lots

00:10:29
of things learning. And also, I've been on the board of dam.

00:10:35
The divers alert network done that on two occasions now. And

00:10:40
it's great to have an organization that is really

00:10:44
focused on diver safety, and to do the real research to

00:10:50
understand what are the limits? If you get into a jam, what do

00:10:53
you do it but it's a really intriguing concept that we can

00:11:06
take an air breathing creature such as we are, and safely go

00:11:13
for extended periods of time and saturation diving. I've enjoyed

00:11:16
that to 10 different occasions now. But the first time in 1970.

00:11:23
It was still experimental. And well, I guess, all of this

00:11:29
still, we're still learning as we go about things that we

00:11:35
haven't anticipated. But the idea that you can allow your

00:11:41
tissues to become fully saturated with compressed air or

00:11:46
other mixes of gases. And once they're really saturated, you

00:11:51
can stay in theory infinitely that certainly for days and

00:11:56
weeks, or even months under pressure, and then have the same

00:12:05
time for decompression, whether you're staying for 24 hours or

00:12:09
24 days or maybe even 24 months. It stayed two years. But anyway.

00:12:17
Yes, I mean, I guess commercial divers really do have long

00:12:22
saturation dives. Longest I've saturated is two weeks.

00:12:27
Matt Waters: It's no small dive is it?

00:12:29
Sylvia Earle: It's great. You forget your, your first, really,

00:12:36
least I slipped into that zone where you almost forget your

00:12:43
breathing. And that's kind of dangerous because you have to

00:12:47
keep remembering I don't really belong here. Be mindful that I

00:12:53
have an air breather. And I'm not holding my breath. I'm

00:12:56
breathing compressed air or mixed mixture of gases,

00:13:01
depending on this substance

00:13:02
Matt Waters: It is a form of meditation, isn't it? You know,

00:13:05
I look at my Mrs, She loves her yoga and whatnot. But for me

00:13:09
being under the water is just so nice. You say zen.

00:13:12
Sylvia Earle: You become one with the water. At least in warm

00:13:16
water, now cold water you never forget.

00:13:21
Matt Waters: Why do you think I left the UK it's too cold there!

00:13:25
Sylvia Earle: Full alert all the time. Hahaha.

00:13:29
Matt Waters: Now you do touch on living underwater in in the

00:13:33
book. And with the ladies and talking about you know, you go

00:13:38
you go as though you're going out for a walk or down the

00:13:40
corner to get your pint of milk and, you know, those that group

00:13:44
or and those that Moray ale get to do the routine of your

00:13:49
neighbors. Yeah.

00:13:50
Sylvia Earle: Well, that for me was transformative, getting to

00:13:55
know individual fish and where they live and how they behave as

00:14:02
individuals. It really should be no surprise. cats, dogs, horses,

00:14:08
birds, or fellow vertebrates. That are other fellow

00:14:13
vertebrates the fish similarly have faces, attitudes,

00:14:19
personality. Some of them have very complicated social

00:14:24
structure. Some team up mate for life. I just came across a paper

00:14:32
written by Eugenie Clark, known as the shark lady, but she was

00:14:37
ever so much more than one who studied sharks and started the

00:14:42
mote Marine Laboratory in Florida that still focuses on

00:14:47
sharks as a specialty. But she studied tilefish they're

00:14:52
monogamous, which means they choose a mate and they stick

00:14:56
together for four years. Not just see horses also tend to be

00:15:04
monogamous. They don't live as long as tilefish tilefish can be

00:15:11
around for 20 years, maybe more. And to imagine that, I mean, not

00:15:17
people don't even obey those rules. Yeah. But here, these

00:15:22
fish steady as she goes, like choose a mate and they, they

00:15:28
stick together, it's really something that fishermen tend

00:15:34
not to take into account officials just, you know, either

00:15:38
bait or it's something that cats eat or catch and sell. But But

00:15:44
those who have the privilege of spending time underwater, you

00:15:49
really see life in the sea, not just fish, but lobsters take on

00:15:54
personality and have habits, social structure, and behaviors

00:15:59
that are really intriguing when you get to focus on them and

00:16:04
think of them as just miracles. creatures that are the result of

00:16:14
literally hundreds of millions of years of give and take. And

00:16:21
they're here with us.

00:16:23
Matt Waters: Yeah, and so many people when I have these

00:16:25
discussions with people about what's it like on the water, and

00:16:28
I refer back to being a kid, and most kids, girls and boys have a

00:16:34
little dream every now and then of visiting a far off planet and

00:16:38
meeting aliens, etc, etc, we'll step into the water, and you've

00:16:43
done it.

00:16:45
Sylvia Earle: Absolutely. And, yes, it's so many ways, they

00:16:51
seem alien, like an octopus. Oh, I'd love to be an octopus,

00:16:56
wouldn't you change color, just make, make your skin take all

00:17:02
different shapes and move your arms and your whole body can

00:17:07
just be so flexible. On the other hand, we now understand

00:17:13
what is taken all preceding history, but mostly what we've

00:17:19
learned in the last 50 or 60 years about how all life is

00:17:25
connected in that we share genetic makeup and composition

00:17:33
to a very large extent with most of the rest of life on Earth,

00:17:37
not just our fellow primates, like chimpanzees and, and other

00:17:43
great other great apes where we we have very close like 98%

00:17:48
similarity to chimpanzees is that 2% that makes the big

00:17:52
difference. But when you look at even bacteria, we have DNA in

00:18:01
common. We can capitalize on that similarity, the chemistry

00:18:05
of life by harnessing microbe power to synthesize things that

00:18:12
are useful to us, such as certain pharmaceuticals that we

00:18:20
use, but they're synthesized by bacteria, and insulin, for

00:18:29
example, I think, that may not be the only source but it is a

00:18:33
source. It's the chemistry of life. And it's shared across all

00:18:39
variations on the theme of living creatures, from elephants

00:18:44
to eels, human beings in between, and all the diversity

00:18:50
of life in the ocean. So they're alien, by some ways of looking

00:18:55
at it, but it's very familiar, the same basic chemistry of

00:19:01
life. And yet, the wonderful thing about that is how

00:19:06
different each individual it's not just, we can tell an

00:19:11
elephant from an eel course. But you can tell every elephant from

00:19:15
every other elephant, every cat, every other cat, every human

00:19:20
from every other human. Every card from every other card, or

00:19:26
tuna. That's a concept that makes my head go wow. Right? All

00:19:35
this similarity that holds us all together, but coupled that

00:19:39
with enormous diversity of life.

00:19:42
Matt Waters: Each and every one of us are individually.

00:19:44
Sylvia Earle: Yes. Right.

00:19:46
Matt Waters: Thats a beautiful thing. I want to ask about

00:19:50
mission blue.

00:19:52
Sylvia Earle: Yes.

00:19:53
Matt Waters: I did. Watch the documentary again the other day

00:19:57
for I have not watched it for a while but I think it's fifth or

00:19:59
six. Time now. Big shout out to Fisher Stevens, one of my I know

00:20:06
the mission blue itself is much more important point to make but

00:20:12
seeing Fisher Stevens feeling rough as hell on a boat, rocking

00:20:17
in the oceans, and you're completely oblivious to it and

00:20:19
working away, I think is just fantastic.

00:20:24
Sylvia Earle: Well, I have to say, I think no one is immune

00:20:28
from what is known as seasickness mal de mer, I have

00:20:33
experienced it. And I know what it's like to be so sick that you

00:20:40
you think you're gonna die and then you wish you could feel so

00:20:46
bad. But fortunately, I don't often succumb I one of my best

00:20:56
dive buddies talked me out of it once he said, you know, you just

00:21:00
need to make the ocean your friend dance with the ocean when

00:21:03
the ocean is rocking and rolling. Just go with it, and

00:21:07
embrace it, and enjoy it. And he can't always get away with that.

00:21:12
But mostly, it's a mindset. It's not always I mean, I've seen

00:21:17
people and I've experienced it myself, it's you might have

00:21:21
gotten sick standing on, try on the dark. But, but it's

00:21:25
exacerbated when you get out and back and forth in the sea. But

00:21:30
mainly I love it. And never sleep as well as anywhere, as

00:21:36
well as I do. When I'm at sea. I just but I don't want to sleep,

00:21:41
I want to be awake 24 seven, just to soak it up.

00:21:47
Matt Waters: You got a you did have a special moment, we'll

00:21:50
come back to mission blue in a moment. But I'm doing tangent

00:21:53
thing here, the Jim suit. Again, he talked about it in the book

00:21:58
and you know being so deep underwater, and that moment of

00:22:06
turning the lights out and seeing the life. And that's got

00:22:11
to be something that just is unforgettable.

00:22:15
Sylvia Earle: I'm sure that any diver listening can empathize

00:22:24
with that feeling of going as deep as you can on any one dive.

00:22:31
And you see that the ocean keeps going and the fish keep going.

00:22:35
The life, the desire to go deeper and stay longer is always

00:22:41
there. And having a suit system, a diving system that enabled me

00:22:50
to continue breathing error, at the same pressure that we're

00:22:53
breathing in this conversation one atmosphere and be able to go

00:22:59
down with my arms and legs in encased in, in a protective

00:23:05
shell like a crab so that I could add like a crab to have

00:23:10
joints so that I can move not merely with the dexterity that

00:23:14
we have sitting here but nonetheless to be able to be a

00:23:19
diver walking. And to do it at 300 plus meters almost 400

00:23:28
meters were at the edge of darkness, I could still see the

00:23:32
difference between up and down day. I mean light above and dark

00:23:36
below. But that was that was transformative. It's what led me

00:23:42
to start working with engineers to build submersibles, personal

00:23:46
submersibles one person systems initially now working on on

00:23:52
three person systems to be able to have an experienced pilot and

00:23:57
to observers diverges if you will. But anybody can drive the

00:24:03
submarine. That's the joy. I mean, most submarines require a

00:24:06
dedicated pilot. And if you're there as a passenger, you get to

00:24:11
have the view but you don't have the controls. And it's like

00:24:16
going with a diver piggyback, you don't have control about

00:24:20
where to go. You just have to go along for the ride, like a taxi

00:24:25
driver or passenger. So I am thrilled to now be again,

00:24:33
looking over the shoulders of engineers and really seeing that

00:24:38
vision come through that you can take one or two or three or more

00:24:44
people but three person systems now there's still small enough

00:24:47
so they can be transported in a standard shipping container to

00:24:52
places anywhere in the world and go down to 1000 meters while

00:24:57
it's into and below. The Twilight Zone was really

00:25:03
eternally dark except for bioluminescence. Oh, yeah.

00:25:10
Matt Waters: We, when I was teaching back in Thailand a

00:25:14
number of years ago, you know, we'd take people on their first

00:25:16
night dive and you'd waft around in the water at the end of the

00:25:19
dive so they could see the bioluminescence and the

00:25:23
sparkle's everywhere.

00:25:24
Sylvia Earle: It's ethereal.

00:25:27
Matt Waters: I can't imagine what it's like deeper down, it

00:25:29
must be an amazing sight.

00:25:31
Sylvia Earle: I don't know why people resist night diving. For

00:25:35
me, it's the best. It's really well, for one thing, it

00:25:40
simulates what it's like, all of the time, in most of the living

00:25:49
space on the planet. Because when you think about it, where

00:25:55
is life on Earth, most of it's in the ocean. And most of it is

00:26:00
below where light penetrates. average depth of the ocean is

00:26:05
4000 meters, the maximum 11 miles down. And there's life,

00:26:14
all the way from the surface to the greatest steps and even

00:26:17
beneath the bottom of the ocean, for at least another kilometer

00:26:25
or two, depending on where water is able to trickle down through

00:26:30
the bottom of the ocean, and provide that basic ingredient

00:26:33
that all life needs is water, of course, not Sunlight, sunlight,

00:26:40
powers, photosynthesis, carbon capture. You know, it's what has

00:26:46
shaped nature the world we live in. But below where sunlight

00:26:51
penetrates, life prospers, greatest abundance, the greatest

00:26:56
diversity of life on Earth, lives in the dark, all of the

00:27:01
time. And it's cold, but it's beautiful. What's great as

00:27:09
divers are able to be at the upper edge of this vast realm

00:27:16
that makes Earth habitable for all life, whether it's ocean or

00:27:20
terrestrial. We all need the ocean. I think one of the

00:27:24
questions that you put to me in advance of this, of this

00:27:29
conversation was your favorite underwater creature? Well,

00:27:34
that's one thing, but my favorite sea creature, if you

00:27:37
put it that way, it's got to be humans. I mean, I love my

00:27:43
species. I am one. I have kids, I have grandkids. What many

00:27:48
people don't appreciate is that we're sea creatures. We need the

00:27:53
ocean. Every month, every business watches any whale, or

00:27:58
any coral reef, no ocean, no life. No us. So anyway, there

00:28:06
you go.

00:28:06
Matt Waters: Let's let's expand on that one. Because I mean,

00:28:08
everybody talks about how the world needs the oceans and its

00:28:14
inhabitants. And its plankton and its sharks, and how, how can

00:28:19
we actually put that into perspective that people will

00:28:23
truly understand. I think trying to get the information across

00:28:28
sometimes gets a bit sideways and people lose the reality of

00:28:35
of what we need.

00:28:38
Sylvia Earle: That is the biggest problem facing our

00:28:42
species facing the ocean facing our future. That is, people

00:28:49
don't know the knowledge is there. The knowledge is

00:28:53
available. The good news, it's there and it is available. And

00:28:58
more and more people are tuning in, since that first view of

00:29:03
Earth from space that really marked the beginning of about

00:29:10
new wave of looking at the whole world as one system. Many

00:29:18
scientists and philosophers and just people generally had

00:29:24
already taken this into account that everything connects. A

00:29:31
class I took in botany at Duke University back in 19. I think

00:29:39
it was 19. It was in the early 60s anyway. No, it was before

00:29:48
that was in the 50s because I had a 10 year break, getting

00:29:51
married and having kids and all that between kidding. My

00:29:54
master's getting my PhD was in the 50s when Dwight though So

00:30:00
ecologist showed an image that showed it was just a circle,

00:30:05
just filled with crisscross lines. And it was looking at how

00:30:10
everything connects to everything else, he figured it

00:30:13
out and he wasn't alone. But he graphically portrayed that you

00:30:19
touch one part of or pull on one of these little strings and the

00:30:22
whole system is influenced. If you pull hard enough, you really

00:30:28
can shake the whole world now, here we are, we can see that

00:30:33
what happens in the winds, crossing the center blows sand

00:30:39
all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, that land in the

00:30:42
Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and bring with it the spores of

00:30:47
fungi that have caused diseases and corals. That, you know, we

00:30:52
couldn't make those connections until we had enough information

00:30:59
to be able to connect the dots. We haven't known God

00:31:03
geologically. How the world functions how continents move

00:31:08
around that plate tectonics, did not understand the nature of

00:31:12
plates. phytoplankton in the ocean do the heavy lifting in

00:31:17
terms of generating oxygen, capturing carbon? Yes, trees do

00:31:21
a lot of it. Thank you trees for helping keep me alive and all

00:31:25
the rest of us. But plankton in the ocean, phytoplankton does

00:31:30
much, much more has done so long before the retirees gradually

00:31:35
changing the atmosphere of Earth from what was mostly carbon

00:31:41
dioxide, and nitrogen into what we now have still a lot of

00:31:46
nitrogen, but 20% oxygen, and just enough carbon dioxide to

00:31:53
power, photosynthesis to keep green things growing, producing

00:31:58
food continuing to generate oxygen. But we didn't know until

00:32:03
fairly recently in the course of human civilization, I think we

00:32:07
live at the sweet spot in time. It's the first time that we've

00:32:11
been able to understand how everything does connect. And

00:32:16
that we're part of this really intricate, closely wired system,

00:32:23
that what we do to nature we're doing to ourselves. And we've

00:32:27
been so oblivious, that we've consumed big chunks of our life

00:32:33
support system, thinking that nothing we could do, we're just

00:32:37
these tiny little primates, we've surely can't alter the

00:32:40
nature of nature. But here we are in 2021, saying what we put

00:32:47
into the atmosphere what we put into the ocean, what we taken

00:32:50
from the land, clear cutting force, we've taken from the

00:32:54
ocean, clear cutting the ocean, so that 90% of the sharks, the

00:32:59
tunas, the swordfish, so many creatures, just on my watch your

00:33:04
watch, we've we've been watching this collapse of the very

00:33:08
systems that we need to maintain a habitable planet. So a lot of

00:33:14
people still don't haven't gotten that message. The

00:33:20
knowledge is certainly there anybody can put the pieces

00:33:24
together because we got this great puzzle with pieces coming

00:33:29
into place. So how do we know what the weather's going to be

00:33:32
like? in a couple of weeks, we used to look at the Farmers

00:33:36
Almanac and thought that we had worked out heads up about what

00:33:41
it's going to be like next March. But in fact, we were

00:33:45
beginning even then to see patterns and make rough

00:33:50
predictions about what we might be able to expect, based on

00:33:54
experience from the past. But now we're up in the sky, with

00:34:01
satellites with instruments that can take measurements, look at

00:34:05
the whole world and, and hold the world in our hands if you

00:34:09
will, inside and see it calculated measure it and

00:34:13
predict with far greater accuracy than old Farmer's

00:34:18
Almanac ever could. And we take it for granted are starting to

00:34:23
anyway. But there's so much more that we we need to understand

00:34:30
and appreciate and put on the balance sheet, which is why

00:34:35
mission blue really got started to try to be a conduit for

00:34:41
information and a conduit for the message that we must take

00:34:46
care of the natural world land and sea are focuses on the blue

00:34:51
part as if our lives depended on it, because they do so it's an

00:34:59
investment in your life, to plant a tree, to protect a reef

00:35:05
to let the fish instead of this, you're really hungry. But the

00:35:11
fish stay in the ocean. Because they are so important. And we

00:35:16
have taken so many for so long that the populations are in

00:35:20
serious decline. So, people ask me if I eat fish, and I say, I

00:35:25
used to, I know what they taste like. But I also know the code

00:35:32
important they are and that I want my fish alive in the ocean.

00:35:37
And all the rules regulation, the laws that are in place favor

00:35:40
those who don't care about them alive, they want them as a

00:35:45
source of money. Yeah, mostly, it's, I mean, most of the heavy

00:35:49
fish. industrial fishing is not about feeding people. This is

00:35:52
about feeding your bank account. It's wildlife is his money,

00:35:58
monetizing wildlife. We used to do it with birds, and elephants,

00:36:03
just about every other living thing on the land. Basically,

00:36:07
we've, we've changed that habit. We haven't changed with respect

00:36:11
to ocean wildlife. Except whales, we did change with

00:36:15
whales, seals, sea lions, are fellow mammals, but not fish. I

00:36:21
guess we'll get there someday, I hope we do. Because it's the key

00:36:25
to the blue carbon. Part of the carbon equation, if we can just

00:36:33
keep more fish in the ocean will keep more carbon in the ocean

00:36:37
will heal the processes that have taken hundreds of millions

00:36:42
of years to develop in our favor. And it's taking us a few

00:36:47
decades to significantly he'll break those systems, carve them

00:36:51
up and sell them out.

00:36:54
Matt Waters: I think you hit the nail on the head there as well.

00:36:55
It's all about money at the end of the day. people wanting to

00:37:00
make monies and have a comfortable life for themselves

00:37:03
and not thinking of others and other species on planet Earth.

00:37:07
Sylvia Earle: We think of fishes free free goods, anybody can go

00:37:11
out and take them and no, you don't have to pay anybody to do

00:37:14
it. You have to get there your boat costs something. But

00:37:17
perversely, the large scale industrial fishing fleets that

00:37:23
are now extracting millions of tons of ocean wildlife, the

00:37:29
biggest wildlife trafficking, because wildlife trade on the

00:37:33
planet is ocean wildlife. And we don't think of it that way. We

00:37:39
think of the pandas and polar bears and birds and things, but

00:37:45
its biggest wildlife trafficking is in legal extraction of

00:37:51
wildlife. subsidized with in most countries with large

00:37:58
industrial fleets have large industrial subsidies, fuel

00:38:04
subsidies, loans to gear up and end agencies that foster the

00:38:12
extraction of ocean wildlife, not the care of Western

00:38:15
wildlife. Some countries have both Australia has both the

00:38:20
United States as both we have conservation methods at the same

00:38:23
time. We have we have investments to help fishermen

00:38:28
catch fish and market them and get a cure that works. Find

00:38:36
where the fish are so that they can be curving, commercially

00:38:39
extracted in Yep, it's a false accounting, because I don't see

00:38:44
how we can possibly imagine that fish are free. Yeah. There's a

00:38:50
cost to all of us when we take them out of the ocean.

00:38:55
Matt Waters: And it's a massive cost for that for those that can

00:38:57
see it is a massive cost. My only fear is that the increase

00:39:04
of awareness is slower than the increase in the people who want

00:39:10
to grab more money from from the oceans. Well, hopefully we can

00:39:15
reverse that somehow.

00:39:16
Sylvia Earle: Part of the the reality is and the communication

00:39:21
is absolutely the key that the rate of being able to share

00:39:27
knowledge, the way we are right now is unprecedented. It's

00:39:32
really the best hope we've got. And it's one of the principal

00:39:36
things that mission blue does is to have a robust form of

00:39:43
communicating to the public. We have expeditions to these

00:39:47
special places that champions have nominated as hope spots,

00:39:53
and there are 140 hope spots now globally, many more in the wings

00:39:59
that go through process of review by a council of

00:40:05
scientists. We work with the International Union for the

00:40:09
Conservation of Nature, to have this process, have a place that

00:40:14
you know and you love and you're willing to commit, commit to

00:40:18
doing something to go for where it is to get to a better place,

00:40:23
more protection, ultimately for protection for places like, how

00:40:28
about the Coral Sea? How about the Great Barrier Reef, it's now

00:40:32
about 1/3. Protected that even within the Marine Park

00:40:37
Authority, that means that two thirds is open for extraction,

00:40:44
or exploitation of one form or another. It's not like national

00:40:49
parks are the land where you don't shoot the birds, you don't

00:40:54
cut the trees put in many of the places in the ocean that are

00:40:58
called parks, including in my country, the National Marine

00:41:02
Sanctuaries actually encouraged sport fishing. It's a way to

00:41:07
(Matt - really?) get people out to enjoy the ocean. Well, I for

00:41:12
me, there's no joy in killing things. I'd much rather

00:41:16
encourage people to go die, then go see these creatures, and

00:41:22
respect them. And if you get if you really like Eugenie Clark,

00:41:25
she gets to know, a fish or a pair of fish or a family of fish

00:41:34
year after year, after year, that fish lives right there. And

00:41:41
you get to Jane Goodall took 15 years getting to know individual

00:41:45
chimpanzees and families really well their social structure,

00:41:49
their habits, their personalities. So there are

00:41:53
individuals who are doing this with whales. Shane Giroux, who's

00:41:58
a whale situs has been working with a family family and

00:42:03
resident population read families poro. In Dominika in

00:42:09
the Caribbean, he recognizes the Big Mama wheels that stick

00:42:15
around, like for their lifetime their residents. And so to the

00:42:22
daughters, the young males, when they're seven or eight years

00:42:26
old, they take off, they go see the world, but then they come

00:42:32
back, they come back and say Hey, how's it going? You know,

00:42:37
whatever they say, in way mom? Yeah. How the sisters doing

00:42:43
anyway. But it's getting that long experience of getting to

00:42:52
know a place and getting to know individuals, respecting them as

00:43:01
neighbors, if you will, his fellow creatures on this amazing

00:43:05
miracle of a blue planet. So the champions that we have now

00:43:10
around the world are just so important to working with their

00:43:15
communities working with their governments working

00:43:18
internationally, we want to encourage protection of the high

00:43:21
seas beyond national jurisdiction that's about half

00:43:25
the world in divers really represent a powerful voice, you

00:43:31
know that you those of you who get wet under the surface, you

00:43:37
know, that fish and sometimes the same fish repeatedly that

00:43:43
Barracuda that that is really curious and tends to follow you

00:43:48
around. I mean, never got a bite you but he's really wants to

00:43:51
know who you are. I think you're watching the fish and Barracuda.

00:43:55
They're watching you. Yeah, but other fish too, to be there.

00:44:01
Like any other creature, I suppose they're curious.

00:44:06
Matt Waters: You get to recognize the individuals and

00:44:08
absolutely picking up on that there was a there was a I can't

00:44:12
remember he posted it now. But it was a photo of a barracuda.

00:44:15
Richelieu rock on the west coast of Thailand. Went up maybe last

00:44:19
week. I knew exactly which fish it was because it's in exactly

00:44:24
the same spot. It was three and a half years ago when I was

00:44:27
living living and dive in there.

00:44:29
Sylvia Earle: If you look closely, now sometimes it's it's

00:44:32
a little tricky because that but if you look at a school of fish,

00:44:38
they all look alike, right? If you look a crowd of people

00:44:42
shopping, it'll holiday and they all kind of look alike. They

00:44:47
certainly must look alike to a bird flying over. Oh, they're

00:44:50
these primates. They all look alike. But you know, it's not

00:44:54
just what we wear. That sets us apart. We have faces, we have

00:45:01
You know, posture and personnel anyway, it is so obvious when

00:45:07
you really study a school of fish, or a group of parrot fish,

00:45:12
or certainly as Shane Giroux and others who've studied whales.

00:45:18
Another individual Randy wells has studied dolphins in the

00:45:22
region around Sarasota, Florida. He's been studying them now for

00:45:28
almost 50 years. He's gone through generations of bonds and

00:45:35
offspring and sees how is observed and documented. Not

00:45:41
just casually, but I mean, even sampling the DNA to make sure

00:45:45
that his observations are, are accurate because again, like all

00:45:51
humans, we have our unique fingerprints, we have our unique

00:45:55
DNA. So the dolphins soju, potato Cod, so the lobsters,

00:46:02
everyone, it's such a big idea. The chemistry of life is so

00:46:09
consistent across all the great diversity of life and Yep. This

00:46:17
is so filled with potential that every single individual is

00:46:24
different. I love it. It's it's, it's to me the greatest miracle

00:46:34
of life if we can have that consistency coupled with

00:46:37
diversity.

00:46:39
Unknown: Yeah, I want to mention Christina Zenato and her girls

00:46:44
are sharks. And we say about the you know, when you look at Mass,

00:46:49
he said Little Christina on the seabed and a massive sharks

00:46:53
around it. So the unknowing eye its just a mass of sharks.

00:46:57
Sylvia Earle: Yes,

00:46:57
Matt Waters: she's known some of those sharks individuals.

00:47:00
Sylvia Earle: Yes,

00:47:00
Matt Waters: well, 13 years, they've got their own names,

00:47:03
they come and have a little siesta, whether it's brilliant,

00:47:07
Sylvia Earle: and, and they you know, we resist saying that they

00:47:12
become quotes friends, but they certainly recognize individuals

00:47:21
they and behave differently around different individuals.

00:47:28
It's true with cats and dogs and horses, why should it be any

00:47:31
different from from sharks who recognize individuals and their

00:47:35
familiar pose no threat. Whereas a newcomer might go in and

00:47:42
behave in a different fashion. appear to be aggressive. And

00:47:48
whoosh the sharks would be gone? Yeah, right.

00:47:53
Matt Waters: Yep. And it's the The nice thing I like about it,

00:47:56
is that it gets rid of that old belief for rubbish saying that

00:48:02
fish and flight 30 seconds of memory one's well out the

00:48:06
window. Anyone who believes that nowadays is deluded?

00:48:13
Producer of Scuba GOAT: G'day scuba goat listeners Rod here,

00:48:15
producer of the show, I hope that you're enjoying this

00:48:17
episode, and that you're subscribed and following the pod

00:48:20
on your favorite app. Please keep an eye out for the all new

00:48:23
scuba go website coming soon. Now, back to Matt and the show.

00:48:28
Matt Waters: I want to go back to mission blue and the hope

00:48:31
spots. And you mentioned we've got the same as 140 hope spots

00:48:35
now.

00:48:36
Sylvia Earle: So far,

00:48:38
Matt Waters: cool. Now, I was gonna ask how they're created

00:48:42
and how it all comes about. I would actually like to pose that

00:48:47
as a particular location in the Solomon sea in Papua New Guinea.

00:48:53
And it's off the coast of Oro province, and it's called cape

00:48:55
Nelson. I used to work there. And it is, without a shadow of a

00:49:01
doubt one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited and had

00:49:04
the pleasure to dive. And I've taken a few people back there as

00:49:07
well. If I wanted to propose cape Nelson, as a hope spot,

00:49:14
what's the process? How would I go about that?

00:49:18
Sylvia Earle: The easiest thing to do is go to the mission blue

00:49:22
website and ask that question. And step by step. You can be led

00:49:30
through how to submit an application to the HubSpot

00:49:36
Council have this volunteer group of global scientists are

00:49:43
not there to say yes, this qualifies. No, it doesn't know

00:49:47
they're there to help you. Get from through the process and to

00:49:54
help you not just to get a place noted as officially recognized

00:50:03
as a hub spot, but you become part of this network of hope.

00:50:07
This family of places where information is shared, gathered

00:50:13
and shared, images are put into the system. That stories, good

00:50:23
good news, bad news. Here's my problem, here's how I solved it,

00:50:27
I've got a problem. And he got any advice, those kinds of

00:50:30
things become available to those who become a part of the

00:50:34
network. And it's public. I mean, anybody can tune in to

00:50:38
this. But one of the things that is important is to be able to

00:50:44
essentially define that the area so it becomes a place so that

00:50:48
there's a map that indicates what piece of the ocean is under

00:50:54
consideration is a hope spot. And within that area, to do what

00:51:01
you can to characterize it, who lives there, if you are able to

00:51:06
either get, get a take or get photographs, if you're able to

00:51:13
consistently or even from time to time gather information,

00:51:17
data, there's a place to go to put that in the system so that

00:51:22
change over time can be assessed and measured. So that you hope

00:51:28
that next year, you'll see that there's, there's progress

00:51:34
improvement, or not. If not, then what's going on, you share

00:51:38
your stories, share your concerns. And the real goal is

00:51:43
to develop full protection, whether it's, you have to do

00:51:47
that. But like the land where people can own a chunk of land

00:51:52
and protect it. In the ocean, it takes working with the

00:51:56
government, locally, nationally, or in the case of the high seas.

00:52:01
internationally. It may seem daunting, but that's how it

00:52:05
works. And it doesn't work. People do have influence, use

00:52:11
your power, use your knowledge, your superpower of knowing, and

00:52:16
special edge you have those who explore under the surface. tell

00:52:22
people what you see anyway. So we work with the company called

00:52:28
iSeries of global Information Systems, company space in

00:52:33
California. So that every place has a story map. And this

00:52:38
framework where you can put data, images, stories, so that

00:52:45
your hopes what becomes a place really a place you can embrace.

00:52:50
People were tend to be placed based there you get to know a

00:52:56
place your home. And you can extend that into the ocean. Some

00:53:00
of these places that have been designated, are quite intimate,

00:53:04
but others are very large, like the Sargasso Sea is a huge area

00:53:11
and it no one country owns it. But it is a part of what what

00:53:19
these are a respect. And there is an alliance of people the

00:53:24
Sargasso Sea Alliance, working with governments in the whole

00:53:29
region to try to enhance protection for the Sargasso Sea.

00:53:34
And in other cases, one example is in Mexico, Cabo pulmo is, so

00:53:41
few square miles. But it really is loaded with great stories

00:53:47
about efficient community that saw that the fish were

00:53:51
disappearing, decided to stop killing them, started caring for

00:53:56
them started to realize their greater value alive, then, on

00:54:02
our plates. And there, they have a thriving dive tourism

00:54:09
operation that is, is more consistent than when you take 30

00:54:14
year old fish out of the ocean, it's gone. It's free. But once

00:54:20
it's out of the ocean, doesn't doesn't even come back in 30

00:54:23
years, you've disrupted the system. And some of the fishing

00:54:28
techniques that are now being applied are not just hook in

00:54:31
line extract and there's a hole left in the system but trawling

00:54:37
is devastating. It takes the whole ecosystem on and so much

00:54:43
bycatch. It's it's a very messy business. So we're trying across

00:54:49
the board to eliminate destructive techniques for

00:54:54
extraction of wildlife.

00:54:57
Matt Waters: Well, we got a destructive technique going on

00:54:59
down here. And it's been going on for years. And that's the

00:55:01
shark nets and drum lines off the coast of Queensland and New

00:55:05
South Wales. And, you know, horrible news come through a few

00:55:10
days ago of a humpback whale that's been caught up in one of

00:55:13
the nets. And it's just keeps happening time and time again.

00:55:17
Sylvia Earle: I visited Vueler Davis at the shark. I think they

00:55:24
call it the shark Research Institute. And this was, we

00:55:31
think that would have been about 19. In the 1970s. The first No,

00:55:44
no, sorry. I did have a foot that was not in Australia. That

00:55:51
was in South, it was in South Africa, really Davis, the same

00:55:55
thing that was same idea that you have these nets. And the

00:56:01
idea is to keep people safe. Well, you're not keeping people

00:56:05
safe by killing sharks. We need the sharks, they keep us safe,

00:56:09
that keeps the ocean safe. But it's so seductive. Because we

00:56:20
have this mindset that sharks are dangerous, or we're

00:56:22
protecting ourselves, right? Good shark, the only good shark

00:56:26
was a dead shark. And that South African facility, it was in

00:56:31
Durban, you're there that have the same mindset that we now see

00:56:41
in Australia. That and, and along the wherever those

00:56:47
circuits are being deployed?

00:56:51
Matt Waters: Yeah, it's it's something that people are

00:56:54
fighting against. And I was speaking to Andre Borell, a

00:56:57
couple of episodes ago, he was the director of Envoy Shark

00:57:02
Cull, great documentary. If you've not seen it yet, you can

00:57:05
find it brilliant. Rick focuses on the shark nets and how

00:57:09
antiquated they are. And, and, quite frankly, how dangerous

00:57:14
they are for us as humans, because the catch that's

00:57:17
occurring in the Nets is actually on the inside, not on

00:57:20
the outside. So the sharks have already been in so the waters

00:57:22
were were splashing around, and then going out again.

00:57:27
Sylvia Earle: In 2020, the International the meetings in

00:57:32
Davos, World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, had

00:57:36
commissioned a study about the value of whales with respect to

00:57:41
the carbon that they hold, connected to climate, carbon

00:57:45
value of whales, and they calculated about a trillion

00:57:50
dollars worth of carbon is held in the number of whales that now

00:57:56
exist on the planet, as it relates to climate blue carbon.

00:58:02
So if it works for whales, it has to carry over it has to be

00:58:06
the same for sharks, how much blue carbon is captured,

00:58:12
sequestered and ultimately under normal circumstances would be

00:58:17
taken to the depths of the ocean where long term carbon storage

00:58:22
takes place. And while they're living, carbon based units,

00:58:28
they're giving back nutrients the power of the phytoplankton,

00:58:32
just as whales when they eat, they give nutrients back to the

00:58:36
ocean. In foster the photosynthesis is so vital for

00:58:42
carbon capture. Oxygen production, it's the system it's

00:58:45
the way the world works. Yeah, those are out there killing

00:58:49
sharks, because they think they're doing something good or

00:58:52
doing something terribly wrong. terribly bad for not just the

00:58:57
sharks. All of us are paying the price. So I don't know what it's

00:59:02
going to take. I tried with every way I know how. If you

00:59:09
come up with some brilliant ideas that you can communicate

00:59:12
to your listeners, to your friends to anybody. We've got to

00:59:17
it's not just about fins. It's about sharks. It's about tuna.

00:59:25
It's about Cod. It's about orange roughy. It's about krill.

00:59:31
It's about the living ocean that holds the planet steady. This is

00:59:35
a climate issue. We know forests are really critical to

00:59:41
capturing, holding and sequestering carbon, we would

00:59:45
protect forests, with climate in mind. We must protect the ocean

00:59:51
with climate in mind. That's I think it's one of the greatest

00:59:56
opportunities we now have to quickly make an enormous

01:00:02
difference for for the carbon carbon capture.

01:00:07
Matt Waters: And that's it. We are living in the time now where

01:00:10
we've got so much information, we can actually do something

01:00:14
with it. Yes, rather than being blinkered and blind and

01:00:19
downright rude, we can do something with this information

01:00:23
that we've got, and we can make the world a better place.

01:00:27
Sylvia Earle: So getting the kids involved, getting the kid

01:00:30
in grownups involved, you know, what I love about diving is that

01:00:37
it makes everybody kind of like, like a kid again, you, you take

01:00:46
someone who's spent his or her life, behind the desk, or

01:00:54
wearing a coat and tie or whatever it is, and you take

01:01:01
them out into the ocean. It's just so disarming. It's a great

01:01:07
leveler, it really truly is. And suddenly, you begin asking

01:01:14
questions that you wouldn't think of asking. If you never

01:01:18
take the plunge, if you never dive in. I'm such an

01:01:22
enthusiastic supporter of diving is a transformative experience.

01:01:28
My mother actually waited until she was 81. Really, and I don't

01:01:35
know why I thought I tried. I didn't try hard enough. I,

01:01:40
literally, I, I just I get so wrapped up in all the other

01:01:46
things that I was doing. And she seemed perfectly happy doing all

01:01:48
the things she was doing. But she, she will tell you, don't

01:01:53
wait till you're 81 if you can, but if you are, it's not too

01:01:57
late. You can take diving at such a wide range of, of, of

01:02:06
effort and expense, or whatever it is, you can make it really

01:02:09
easy, really simple. Really, just like a walk in the park and

01:02:16
clear warm water. And of course, snorkelers are part of this, of

01:02:22
this army of, of power to transform the world. But you can

01:02:29
always go a little deeper and I, as you know, dedicated to

01:02:33
developing submersibles that can take kids and CEOs, and anybody

01:02:42
that men will never grow up. either decide whatever the

01:02:48
gender DMA is one of the things I tried to express in, in this

01:02:59
book to take people on a journey to to be able to, but not too

01:03:06
many people do what I've done, read it cover to cover. But

01:03:11
there is a journey of beginning a middle and an end. But within

01:03:14
it, there's stories that you can take one bite at a time. But

01:03:19
together they tell the story of the ocean, but in particular

01:03:22
this I mean, how do people overcome the lack of gills? What

01:03:29
is it? How have we technologically in a remarkably

01:03:35
short period of time been able to go from standing on the shore

01:03:40
and being able to go to the deepest part of the ocean. Only

01:03:43
a handful of people have done this. But some have only half

01:03:47
people people have stepped on the moon. And we've come a long

01:03:51
way since stepping on the moon. We're getting there more rapidly

01:03:55
now in the ocean. But we're still lagging far behind access

01:04:01
to the skies above. Yeah, but let's get with it.

01:04:06
Matt Waters: Again, on the book front, I've got to say, I'm not

01:04:10
a massive reader. I'm not the kind of person that picks up a

01:04:13
book and starts reading. I'd rather go and do something else,

01:04:16
like dive in or photography or whatever. However, I think it's

01:04:20
been must be seven, eight years since I've actually read a book

01:04:26
cover to cover. Ocean is the first book that I have done from

01:04:34
cover to cover.

01:04:36
Sylvia Earle: That's two of us haha.

01:04:38
Matt Waters: Oh, I've thoroughly enjoyed it is mesmerizingly

01:04:42
beautiful with so much information. It's fantastic.

01:04:46
Sylvia Earle: And thank you for diving into that endevour.

01:04:52
Matt Waters: Like I said in the introduction I never thought I'd

01:04:54
be talking to you about a National Geographic book. I

01:04:57
mean, it's amazing but The book is due out later this year,

01:05:02
Sylvia Earle: comes out in November. And the opportunity to

01:05:13
use the pandemic as a time of reflection. And just trying to

01:05:23
put the pieces together not just the observations that I've had

01:05:30
the privilege of gathering over the years. But by by really

01:05:40
examining the massive amount of information that has been

01:05:46
accumulated, we've learned more about the ocean. Since the

01:05:51
1950s, since I began diving, then during all preceding human

01:05:57
history, he imagined in the 1950s, the idea of continents

01:06:05
move around was still considered mostly something to laugh about,

01:06:11
that there's a way that you can move the Continental masses on a

01:06:16
scale that now we know has happened, and that they're in

01:06:21
constant motion is just happens to be slow motion. Yeah,

01:06:26
geologically stately pace, like a very long time long distance

01:06:32
dance. We did not even know where to start asking questions

01:06:40
and tried to find the answers like, who first discovered the

01:06:44
existence of oxygen in the atmosphere who first identified

01:06:50
the presence of viruses? When did we first know about

01:06:56
photosynthesis? There's so much that we did not know 500 years

01:07:05
ago, when the first circumnavigation of the world

01:07:09
took place. When you think about everything that we take for

01:07:18
granted today, language, have the ability to talk to people

01:07:22
the way we're talking, you're on the other side of the world, or

01:07:24
we're talking of sharing images and stories. That's such a gift

01:07:30
that we now have available to us. So for me, being able to

01:07:35
kind of kick back over the last year plus two years, actually,

01:07:40
I've started in 2019. But was, it was almost something I

01:07:48
probably would have tried to do. But I would not have been as

01:07:50
effective at assembling the pieces that have come forth in

01:07:54
this book. Had I continued my usual running around the world

01:07:58
schedule have tried to pack in as much as I could. Especially

01:08:03
being in the ocean as much as I could.

01:08:06
Producer of Scuba GOAT: Hey there listeners Rod here again,

01:08:07
apologies for breaking in. But just wanted to let you know that

01:08:09
Sylvia's book, National Geographic Ocean A Global

01:08:11
Odyssey is being released November this year, but is

01:08:14
already available for pre order on line, you'll find a link in

01:08:18
the show notes, make sure to go and reserve your copy. And don't

01:08:21
forget to subscribe to the pod. Now, back to Matt and Sylvia.

01:08:26
Sylvia Earle: Early 2020, I was in the Seychelles and then hit

01:08:31
dry dock.

01:08:33
Matt Waters: Yeah,

01:08:33
Sylvia Earle: until until just a couple of weeks ago, I was able

01:08:36
to go to the Azores for a brief visit to launch a new hope spot

01:08:43
in the doors and got back in the water again, and really soaked

01:08:49
it up. dry rot is a terrible thing. It's a took a lot of

01:08:56
hours.

01:08:57
Matt Waters: If I'm, if I'm successful with the hope spot

01:09:01
for cape Nelson, you'll have to come and open up. I'll be your

01:09:04
guide.

01:09:05
Sylvia Earle: Let's let's do it, I would be so happy to work with

01:09:07
you on that.

01:09:08
Matt Waters: I would be amazing. It's a beautiful, beautiful

01:09:12
location

01:09:13
Sylvia Earle: is and we should do everything we can to keep it

01:09:16
that way. Some hope spots start out in great shape. And our job

01:09:21
is to not let them degrade. Many of them. Like right here in San

01:09:27
Francisco Bay. It's a hope spot. But it is not exactly pristine.

01:09:34
There are places in it that are remarkably in Good, good

01:09:37
condition, despite all the changes, but overall, we know

01:09:42
that we can take actions right now that will go from where we

01:09:47
are to a better place. That's what the hub spots are about.

01:09:52
create this empowerment of people to do what they can to

01:09:56
make the world to make the ocean better. Every day, we can do

01:10:00
things, it's not hopeless, by any means,

01:10:03
Matt Waters: It is a location that's just not being hit by

01:10:07
commercial fishing, etc, etc, just yet. But I think it's it's

01:10:14
one of those locations in the world that is, and can easily be

01:10:18
a target. So to be able to protect, it would be fantastic.

01:10:23
prevent it before it starts,

01:10:26
Sylvia Earle: I heartily encourage you to do it, and

01:10:29
anyone who's listening, if there's a place that you know,

01:10:33
when love from what to help, or look at those that already

01:10:37
exist, I love the idea. And we are working with Paddy, that

01:10:44
we're working with other organizations as well. But to

01:10:47
get divers to use their mighty powers of observation, and

01:10:54
photography, their sense of, of adventure ever of caring, and

01:11:00
when they are diving in a hope spot, to to be a part of the

01:11:06
action, identifying and control the website and find out who the

01:11:09
champions are locally. And, be in, get involved, do what you

01:11:16
can to be a part of the action. And if place, you know and love,

01:11:20
like what you're describing in Raja Ampat, you know, take the

01:11:28
initiative, you know, you can become a champion, you can find

01:11:32
a champion that you can work with in the area. And it's

01:11:37
really exciting, we are making progress. Going back to when I

01:11:41
began diving, as I said, there were no areas of the ocean that

01:11:46
were protected. The Great Barrier Reef in 1975, the Park

01:11:53
Authority was really a pioneer in that endeavor. And they still

01:11:59
have a way to go to be embrace all of the park that they call a

01:12:03
park with enhanced protection. Right now, most of it is really

01:12:09
still open for various kinds of exploitation. But those areas

01:12:17
that are really highly protected today 3% doesn't sound like

01:12:23
much, but it's so much more than even going back to 1990 when

01:12:30
there was a fraction of 1%. So we're beginning to scale up,

01:12:37
maybe we'll get to that tipping point where it accelerates.

01:12:40
That's what we're aiming for to get 30% by 2030. Half of the

01:12:46
ocean, at least by 2050. Yep. Why? It's our life support

01:12:53
system. We're really protecting ourselves by protecting the

01:12:57
ocean. What could be more exciting than that, and knowing

01:13:01
that it works, when you embrace a place with care and take the

01:13:06
pressure off. It's amazing how fish tend to come back. Or you

01:13:12
can go too far, we have lost many species on my watch, we've,

01:13:20
we've taken pieces of the thread of the fabric of life, just pull

01:13:25
them out, they're gone. Yeah, we can't put them back. But we

01:13:30
certainly don't have to let it get any worse. We have the power

01:13:35
to protect, we certainly know how to destroy, but we also have

01:13:40
this superpower of understanding and, and taking action

01:13:46
strategically, in ways that really count. That's what that's

01:13:52
what keeps me excited every day. talking with you, thank you for

01:13:59
the chance to share stories and and listen to you.

01:14:06
Matt Waters: Sylvia it's fantastic. It really is and I

01:14:09
feel truly honored to be speaking to you about what we

01:14:14
both love. And then having the opportunity to read my first

01:14:18
book in seven, eight years. what's the future

01:14:24
for us? What's your thoughts on our future? You know, we've just

01:14:29
touched on the power but the reality Are we on that cusp of

01:14:32
improvement?

01:14:37
Sylvia Earle: We have a choice. We know what to do. The evidence

01:14:43
is all around us that our life support system is in decline. We

01:14:52
know why? There are a lot of other creatures on earth and

01:14:55
freely smart. I keep thinking about dolphins and whales and

01:14:59
elephants And I've met some pretty smart fish my time. But

01:15:06
they cannot know what we know what you know what 10 year olds

01:15:10
have today know, that no humans could know, at the time that I

01:15:16
was a child, the children of today are really cause for hope.

01:15:21
Because they have grown up in a time when knowledge is been more

01:15:30
accessible than any time in all history. And there's more

01:15:34
knowledge there meaningful knowledge, knowledge that we

01:15:40
know how to provide food for ourselves, without killing the

01:15:45
ocean, we got the evidence, we know what to do, we know how to

01:15:50
feed ourselves. With a lighter touch on the land, we can

01:15:54
restore much of, of the of the surface of the planet, land and

01:16:00
sea together, and more effectively use parts that have

01:16:07
already been converted without carving up new, wild, productive

01:16:14
areas, we should not take another inch of Intact Forest,

01:16:20
we really should not, we should say thank you, for us for

01:16:24
keeping me alive. And it's, it's true with deserts too, we need

01:16:30
healthy desert systems because their answers they are about how

01:16:35
life can go on with other very dry circumstances. And certainly

01:16:42
in Australia, so much of Australia is naturally dry. But

01:16:48
there's life there. They've got strategies for survival, that we

01:16:52
could learn a great deal from, how do they do that, instead of

01:16:56
plowing went up and trying to irrigate it, and turn it into

01:16:59
something that we think of is better. Maybe we are losing some

01:17:04
of the best secrets to life by destroying these, these special,

01:17:10
wild, natural areas. And the same is true in the ocean. We

01:17:17
look at a muddy place or a sandy area. And we think there's

01:17:22
nothing there until you really look and realize that they're

01:17:26
just so full of life in the ocean itself, that places that

01:17:30
you can just embrace with your arms are filled with creatures.

01:17:36
And they're going about the business of, of eating and being

01:17:41
eaten with the flow of nutrients, the chemistry of

01:17:44
life, the miracle of life. And we we can be a part of, of all

01:17:57
of that with an insight and awareness that no other creature

01:18:03
has the capacity to do that. Dolphins must be aware of the

01:18:10
diversity of phytoplankton, they're probably curious about

01:18:14
jellyfish in the tiny little creatures that they can see as

01:18:19
they're swimming through the ocean. But they don't have the

01:18:23
body of knowledge that we have about the chemistry of life, how

01:18:28
it all ties together, they may have a general sense of it in a

01:18:32
way that we're just beginning to grasp. But when you think about

01:18:39
what we have the special capacity to understand and take

01:18:46
action, that that can result in a place in the universe that is

01:18:56
an enduring home a long term place for us, or we can continue

01:19:02
doing what we're doing now. It just consumed the natural world.

01:19:07
And then it's gone. And so we're we think about maybe 5% of the

01:19:13
old growth forest remain in North America. We've managed to

01:19:17
level the amazing old trees. These systems have taken all

01:19:26
preceding history to come together. And we have just torn

01:19:31
them apart. Thinking that we're improving

01:19:36
an old Marsh that's been around for 20 years. And we think

01:19:41
we're improving it by tearing it up and putting a parking lot

01:19:44
right there. Or hotel right on the waterfront. There used to be

01:19:50
so but about a third of San Francisco Bay has been filled

01:19:56
and there were skyscrapers on what used to be The Bay and the

01:20:03
1800s much of that dredging and filling took place to convert

01:20:08
ocean to land. It's happening all over the world. We call it

01:20:14
reclamation. We call it development. These are false

01:20:20
words. Yeah. It's not development, the end of the

01:20:23
scale is not. And we're not reclaiming anything. We're

01:20:27
claiming it. But we're not reclaiming it. was ours in the

01:20:32
first place. Anyway, we have to give back. Well, it's time to

01:20:38
take what we know the knowledge and to aggressively if you have

01:20:45
questions, don't just be content with ignorance. Ask you know

01:20:56
there a lot of things we still don't know, I think the biggest

01:20:58
discovery of all time is the magnitude of our ignorance and,

01:21:04
and respect for what we don't know. If you can just get that

01:21:09
through our collective minds. It might cause us to be less

01:21:16
aggressive about converting what remains of the natural wild

01:21:21
places to short term use that we think of is an improvement.

01:21:27
Because basically, it's not deep sea mining. Right now, we're

01:21:33
taking these ancient systems taking literally hundreds of

01:21:37
millions of years, in the deep sea, places never disturbed by

01:21:42
human activity before. Even the deep sea fishing hasn't gotten

01:21:46
to 4000 meters down. But there are now billions of dollars

01:21:52
invested in mining the deep sea with these amazing machines. It

01:21:58
is amazing. you admire the engineering, but you also are

01:22:02
horrified at the thought we would deliberately go tear up

01:22:08
intact wild places that are part of the carbon cycle, part of the

01:22:14
network of existing life that we would deliberately unravel for

01:22:24
short term gain. It really makes no sense at all.

01:22:29
I have a question for you. Have you been diving in Sydney

01:22:32
Harbour?

01:22:34
Matt Waters: I have. I love it. It's cold. It's not there's not

01:22:39
tropical water. But yeah, I do love it. We were down.

01:22:45
Yesterday, yesterday went down to Shelly Beach. We didn't dive.

01:22:51
But it was just looking absolutely beautiful. And we're

01:22:54
so lucky here. It's It's a beautiful, beautiful underwater

01:22:58
world here.

01:23:00
Sylvia Earle: Have you heard the big cuttlefish?

01:23:04
Matt Waters: Oh, yeah.

01:23:05
Sylvia Earle: Aren't they the best?

01:23:11
Matt Waters: The center center show at the moment. We've got a

01:23:16
Facebook group has over 4000 divers in it nowadays just for

01:23:19
Sydney. We have like visibility reports is called Sydney Viz or

01:23:24
Viz and constantly the cuttelfish open little videos

01:23:29
and photos and all the other underwater species we have. In

01:23:36
fact you've dived over here, aye?

01:23:39
Sylvia Earle: Oh, yes. Yes.

01:23:40
Matt Waters: And you saw our PJ's, our little port Jackson's?

01:23:44
Sylvia Earle: Yes, absolutely.

01:23:47
Matt Waters: Plenty of those played around at the moment.

01:23:51
Sylvia Earle: It's what I think about how so many people have

01:23:57
are depriving themselves of the joy of getting to know the part

01:24:07
of the planet that makes our existence possible that they

01:24:12
don't, don't just dive in, and how many people in Sydney have

01:24:19
not done what you've done? There is that concern that keeps some

01:24:30
people out of the water and it really baffles me why that is.

01:24:36
There's sharks out there. And don't eat me. I used to the

01:24:44
early days. Be a little bit concerned. When I saw sharks

01:24:51
underwater, because of the this idea of they're out to get me

01:24:57
and now I'm concerned when I don't see sharks And that's most

01:25:01
of the time, because it's a sign that the ocean is in trouble

01:25:04
when you don't see sharks. And the more people have actually

01:25:12
gone into the ocean, the more it's obvious that sharks are not

01:25:18
out to get us. Every once in a while, maybe a shark will, out

01:25:24
of curiosity perhaps, or maybe sometimes hunger because we've

01:25:27
taken all their food for our tables, and left nothing much

01:25:32
the rest of the creatures out there. But, you know, we take so

01:25:39
many bites out of them, millions of sharks that are consumed,

01:25:44
either as Super steaks, or just their fins. It's just crazy,

01:25:51
that we have an appetite for sharks. It just doesn't make any

01:25:55
sense. That why we should do this? Yeah, what are the kill

01:25:59
them for sport? Would it kill them, because you think you're

01:26:02
doing something good for the world, that's really perverse,

01:26:09
we really must change that.

01:26:13
Matt Waters: And it's people all over the world, everyone who has

01:26:19
an opinion and the right opinion on how we need to protect

01:26:24
sharks. And it's a combination of all those people coming

01:26:27
together that's actually going to make their voice heard. And

01:26:31
we compare the media nowadays to what it was in the 80s,

01:26:37
following Spielberg, and jaws, etc, etc. I think they're all

01:26:42
bait, they still do, say shark attacks rather than shark bites,

01:26:46
which is more correct. We are we are seeing this, this lean

01:26:51
towards an improved view of sharks. And not only come from

01:26:58
all of those individuals that have got a collective voice.

01:27:02
Sylvia Earle: And you have some real champions Ron and Valerie

01:27:05
Taylor, based in Sydney for so many years, but they started out

01:27:12
thinking as a device that you had to fear sharks. And they

01:27:17
became very, very strong voices for protecting them, because

01:27:23
they could see what divers can see for themselves. They're not

01:27:27
a threat. And in fact, they're beautiful. And they're really

01:27:31
important to the integrity, the health of the ocean, which is

01:27:34
important to our health. And I also love the fact that it was

01:27:38
Valerie Taylor, who was successful in getting a part of

01:27:43
the Great Barrier Reef protected to really protect fish, the

01:27:51
potato cod in the cod hole that people used to go and revel in

01:27:58
the experience of being around these giant fish bigger than

01:28:01
you, man. I mean, a lot heftier than you. And they were curious,

01:28:09
they're like puppies gathering around the divers, I had the joy

01:28:12
of diving there. Oh, goodness, I guess in the in the 1980s. But

01:28:19
it was not protected. And at first and I mean, Valerie was

01:28:24
heartbroken when she went back to visit this special place and

01:28:29
and somebody had come there and just fish them out just killed

01:28:33
them. They're easy to kill. Because they just like big

01:28:37
puppies. They sit there its like spearing a sofa, to spear, a big

01:28:42
grouper. They're, they're innocent, they're curious,

01:28:46
they're not out anyway. So she was infuriated and motivated and

01:28:53
successful.

01:28:55
Matt Waters: I want too get on the show at some point, because

01:28:59
there's a good mate of mine, Don silcock. I had him on the show

01:29:01
last week and we were talking about bits and pieces and he

01:29:04
just, you know, yeah, I was I was diving down at Clifton

01:29:07
gardens the other day and popped up and had a good quick chat

01:29:10
with Valerie Taylor .....What why won't you texted me So I

01:29:15
could come down and say hello!? Hahaha.

01:29:19
Unknown: She is a global treasure. And what she has

01:29:23
witnessed working with Stan Waterman working with Peter

01:29:27
Benchley, working with people who have had such influence over

01:29:34
the fate of sharks over the years good and bad. Eventually

01:29:38
had no idea pure eventually who wrote Jaws had no idea what of

01:29:45
what he was setting loose on the world. Just unintentional, he

01:29:50
spent most of the rest of his life trying to give back.

01:29:55
Matt Waters: But yeah, you know, these things happen. I've got

01:30:00
I'm Andrew Fox is coming on at some point. Rodney Fox's son.

01:30:04
Yes, he's a massive advocate for the bigger sharks.

01:30:09
Sylvia Earle: He could be really angry at the sharks But no, he

01:30:15
realizes that it's their ocean. Really? It's ours too. But no,

01:30:21
he's one of the greatest champions for sharks, despite

01:30:26
the fact that he almost died from being sampled by one.

01:30:32
Matt Waters: Yeah. At the other end of the scale, I've got a

01:30:37
couple of friends. I'll tell you a quick story. Yes. back, I was

01:30:42
probably about 910 years ago now. sat at a bar on a beach on

01:30:49
the island of Koh Tao in Thailand, not me. But two of my

01:30:52
friends, Dan and Laura. And they were chatting over a beer on how

01:30:57
to protect sharks. And they came up with the idea. looking out

01:31:01
over the beach, there's a smaller Island just off the

01:31:04
coast, called Nanyang. So they decided it would be a good idea

01:31:09
to swim around the island in the name of sharks. So I Think or

01:31:14
Swim for sharks was was born over a beer with these two

01:31:18
chatting about it at the bar. And Nanyang is 3.4 kilometers

01:31:24
around. So they had a race. The next year, they had another

01:31:30
race. And it continued. And it's continued to grow. And, you

01:31:36
know, a bit unfortunate with the pandemic hitting, but it's not

01:31:38
stopped them from doing this when the sharks around you. And

01:31:41
since then, in the last year or two, because people can't travel

01:31:45
there today, they've started popping up doing their own

01:31:47
little swim for sharks around the world. Now, today, about

01:31:53
nine hours after we finish this chat, Dan and Laura and a few

01:31:57
other people are going to be swimming. Crazy as they are,

01:32:00
they're going to be swimming in a lake in the UK. And it's going

01:32:04
to be the first swim for sharks ever done. In the UK.

01:32:09
Sylvia Earle: I love that. People were afraid, afraid to go

01:32:14
in their bathtub for a while after Charles came out. Swimming

01:32:19
in a lake is a great idea.

01:32:22
Matt Waters: So how about if you don't mind, Silvia, could you

01:32:25
give them some words of inspiration that they can mull

01:32:30
over while freezing themselves off kilometers in a lake in the

01:32:35
UK?

01:32:38
Unknown: Well, they certainly have my strong support, and I

01:32:41
salute them for standing up, not standing up for diving down

01:32:49
getting in there. I personally think they're a little bit

01:32:54
crazy. Whatever it takes, I think all of us should figure

01:33:00
out what can I do hover, wild and crazy. It might seem to

01:33:05
others. If it works for you, then go for it. And sometimes it

01:33:11
will attract attention and make a difference in a way that if

01:33:15
you were just like writing a book might not have the same

01:33:19
impact. But we do our artistic thing and whatever whatever ways

01:33:28
really motivate you go for it.

01:33:30
Matt Waters: What's what you've got an abundance of motivation,

01:33:34
but we've got the book that's coming out in November what's

01:33:38
what's next what's what's coming next for Sylvia

01:33:42
Sylvia Earle: onward and downward (HAHAHAHA) working on

01:33:48
little submarines, to to initially have access to 1000

01:33:56
meters to the edge of light, where the Twilight Zone and to

01:34:01
really engage as many people as we can possibly encourage to go

01:34:07
see for themselves. There should be fleets of these little 1,2,3

01:34:14
passengers some small enough to be transported. But safe.

01:34:20
Technology has been been really developed, tried and true.

01:34:26
Overall since the 1960s using acrylic spheres as the

01:34:33
transparent pressure halls to enable people to safely make

01:34:40
these excursions down to Yes, deep when you're holding your

01:34:45
breath go 2000 liters 1000 not 100 1000 liters but there's

01:34:51
still beyond that. A few people have gone to full ocean depth I

01:34:55
would love to be able to have glass is the material That would

01:35:00
inspire engineers to be creative. We know that it can be

01:35:07
done glass spheres, smallish ones, you know, 30 centimeters

01:35:16
across can, but you need to get big ones big enough and safe

01:35:21
enough for humans to go. So you can go with looking at a tiny

01:35:26
porthole to the deepest parts of the ocean that's been done first

01:35:31
time in 19/62 time in 2012, with James Cameron, or recently with

01:35:37
Victor vescovo, has made several dissents and taken individuals

01:35:42
down as observers to full ocean depth in the Mariana Trench. And

01:35:48
it's tremendous that we now can say with confidence. Absolutely.

01:35:55
This is like flying in the sky. There was a time when people

01:35:59
thought that was a ridiculous idea until somebody did it. And

01:36:04
now everybody's doing it, if you will. And I don't fear traffic

01:36:11
jams underwater. We do have traffic jams on the surface that

01:36:16
shipping traffic has become just such a important commercial

01:36:24
endeavor. But it's also had some impact that we need to evaluate

01:36:29
and rethink. But under the surface, the biggest problem is

01:36:33
people don't know what's there. And they're casual about

01:36:37
destroying it. Because they don't know, they think it

01:36:40
doesn't matter. If I could take fishermen down in little

01:36:44
submarines to look what happens when you trawl the ocean floor.

01:36:49
before and after. Here's what a natural, healthy sea surface on

01:36:56
the bottom of the ocean looks like. Here's what happens when

01:36:58
you bulldoze it. Here's the destruction you cause and it

01:37:01
doesn't go away. There's troll marks. So they're, like,

01:37:05
permanently. Yeah. And that's even more. So the deeper you go

01:37:10
into the place where mining is now proposed, because the

01:37:14
processes there move truly at a geological pace. But we're

01:37:22
proposing on a mega scale, to carve up these last wild places

01:37:28
in the deep sea. And we're putting ourselves at risk. I

01:37:32
don't mean individuals who are out there doing it, although

01:37:36
that's part of it. They're not going down. They're sending

01:37:39
robots, we're sending heavy machinery. But we do need to go

01:37:44
and observe it and witness it and expose it and stop it. We

01:37:51
just can't afford it. We can't afford to lose more of the wild

01:37:56
places that are needed to hold the planet steady, recover some

01:38:05
of what has been lost.

01:38:07
Matt Waters: And that's a that's a good point there. It does have

01:38:11
the opportunity to recover if we give it space and time to do so.

01:38:17
Sylvia Earle: Some places recover more readily than

01:38:22
others. But in the deep sea, the processes move at a much slower

01:38:28
pace. We fish live longer. I mean, some fish, even a coral

01:38:32
reef live to be 40 or 50 years old. But the think about orange

01:38:41
roughy when they first began to be extracted when they were

01:38:47
discovered in large quantities around seamounts. Nobody asked

01:38:51
how old they were, or what they were doing in these gatherings

01:38:56
while they're apparently breeding aggregations. And

01:39:00
they've been stripped away. And it turns out that it takes 25

01:39:03
years or so. For them to mature. They don't spawn every year.

01:39:09
They can live to be more than a century old. Greenland shark is

01:39:17
thought to live to be at least four centuries old. And they're

01:39:27
being commercially extracted from the North Sea. I don't know

01:39:33
why there's a market for them.

01:39:37
Matt Waters: And they don't mature sexual maturity for

01:39:40
Greenland sharks, like 150 years old.

01:39:43
Sylvia Earle: Something like that. You know, it's just

01:39:45
whatever it is. It got to be if you think in terms of value

01:39:50
worth dollars and cents, it got to be worth more to us alive

01:39:53
than dead. If so much we'd like to know about them. How do they

01:39:57
live? What do they do what what about Their nature enables them

01:40:01
to live so long. Might there be secrets we could unravel? about,

01:40:07
about their chemistry about their their life story that

01:40:14
would help increase our longevity? And I don't know,

01:40:21
they're just questions. We may never have a chance to ask if we

01:40:27
lose them.

01:40:28
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, we've got to

01:40:31
stop, you know, losing species. I mean, you've mentioned tuna a

01:40:36
few times now. And it's probably the most commonly known fish in

01:40:40
the sea, and on the supermarket shelf, but when you put it into

01:40:46
perspective, and look at like the bluefin tuna and and its own

01:40:52
sexual maturity and trying to reproduce with, we're pulling

01:40:56
them out of the water quicker than they were, then then

01:40:59
they're breeding.

01:41:01
Sylvia Earle: It takes a lot of tuna to have even a few tuna,

01:41:06
you know that. But they, it looks like the world should be

01:41:12
wall to wall with tuna, because they, when they spawn have so

01:41:15
many opportunities for these little tiny fish to be creatures

01:41:21
to populate the ocean, but they're also they are part of

01:41:27
the food chain. They're part of the nutrient cycle part of the

01:41:29
ocean chemistry that most of the eggs produced never make it

01:41:37
through the gauntlet of the carbon cycle inaction, the

01:41:42
nutrient cycle inaction that you get to a point where they're so

01:41:48
futuna that that reproduction is diminished, that the number of

01:41:54
eggs that even get fertilized is not the same as when you've got

01:42:00
masses of simultaneously spawning adults. It's true with

01:42:05
Cod, it's true with a lot of these mass spawning species.

01:42:13
There are others that, like sharks, that have very few young

01:42:19
By comparison, every shark Well, every fish counts, no matter

01:42:26
what the appearance of it, is, when you see a massive School of

01:42:30
herring, you think oh, there's so many we could never

01:42:33
eliminated or either with our JavaScript there and take as

01:42:37
many as we can. But actually, we've taken so many of the small

01:42:42
fish that their numbers are declining as well. That means

01:42:48
the food chain, think of all the creatures that require little

01:42:53
fish, for for their sauces, they cannot get to phytoplankton. I

01:43:00
think you asked me the question in in preparation for this

01:43:04
conversation, what is your favorite undersea creature?

01:43:10
Matt Waters: How do you say it because I can't even say I can

01:43:12
see the word but I can't say it...

01:43:14
Sylvia Earle: you can say it slowly. It's pro chloro caucus.

01:43:21
You can say it pro playgro caucus. That's it

01:43:24
prochlorococcus it's easy, once you let it roll off your tongue

01:43:28
a few times, put it in a in a, you know, a poem or a song. And

01:43:36
produce, you got it locked in your brain. It'll stay there.

01:43:40
These are the organisms that were discovered for the first

01:43:43
time in 1986. Really, and are now known to generate maybe 20%

01:43:52
of the oxygen in the atmosphere. So what else don't we know

01:43:58
that's out there down there, making the earth habitable for

01:44:03
us? Because they're so small. Apparently the smallest

01:44:09
photosynthesizing creature on the planet that we know about so

01:44:13
far Anyway, what else is out there? It's it's kind of

01:44:17
bacterium, blue green. Used to be classified that category of

01:44:23
life is, is algae, but we now know the bacteria. But there's

01:44:29
so abundant, so widespread a number of variations on the

01:44:35
theme of prochlorococcus but collectively, from polar oceans

01:44:41
to the tropics, they are doing the heavy lifting along with

01:44:47
diatoms. With cooker litho forwards, I could have put that

01:44:52
one in there too because the heavy lifting in terms of

01:44:56
capturing carbon and and for Writing food for large numbers

01:45:02
of creatures in the sea. But prochlorococcus? I think,

01:45:08
because, first of all, it's a relatively new discovery of

01:45:13
great importance. It's like a wake up call. Yeah, what else?

01:45:17
Are we destroying changing out there? Just because we haven't

01:45:21
known how to look for it until now. We should use the

01:45:26
precautionary principle. If you don't know. Why would you

01:45:32
presume that that a higher better use of let's say, a rain

01:45:40
forest is to turn it into a sugarcane field, then there is

01:45:46
that its original composition of this, these diverse systems,

01:45:54
they think of how much forested land all over the world has, has

01:46:01
been destroyed in my lifetime. I mean, directly deliberately,

01:46:06
because we did not value we did not understand the value. It's a

01:46:12
difference in terms of cost. And, and a true value. I value

01:46:22
my life. It's hard to put dollar sign on it. Yeah, we should

01:46:28
value the life of all of humankind going forward and all

01:46:35
the rest of life on Earth, it's currently at risk because of us,

01:46:42
and mostly of us not understanding the consequences

01:46:46
of our actions. That's, I can look back and say you didn't

01:46:51
know you didn't understand. really terrible what you did.

01:46:56
But you didn't know. So. Okay. But now we know. Now, there's no

01:47:02
excuse. Yeah, let's do something about it. Why would we eliminate

01:47:08
even one more old growth tree? Let alone one old growth forest,

01:47:15
or an old growth coral reef, or an old growth Deep Sea,

01:47:22
manganese nodule field, which is older than all the others put

01:47:26
together? Yeah. Yeah.

01:47:31
Matt Waters: Silvia, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to

01:47:35
you. And I sincerely thank you for coming on the show. And I

01:47:40
also thank you for everything you've done.

01:47:44
Sylvia Earle: So much more to do. I need everybody to pitch

01:47:47
in, you know, oh, yeah. And the great thing is we all can we,

01:47:51
that's, your people think that it's hopeless. I'm just one

01:47:55
person. Just one person times 8 billion makes all the difference

01:48:00
in the world. Just imagine if I started doing one thing. And

01:48:05
somebody else starts doing one thing in a positive way. And

01:48:11
we're all doing things in the other direction right now that

01:48:14
are dragging us down. All it takes is commitment. Like those

01:48:20
champions for the hope spot saying, I'm going to step up and

01:48:24
do something right here. And I've got to bring you all along

01:48:27
with me. Oh, very soon you got this wave. I think we're

01:48:34
perilously close. Yeah, a lot of doom and gloom, rightfully so

01:48:40
about the tipping points for disaster, whether it's an

01:48:45
pandemics that the court we're going through right now could be

01:48:51
the first likely to be the first of many, because we've so set

01:48:56
ourselves up to be susceptible to pandemics. And look at

01:49:03
climate change. We're so close to the edge of going past the

01:49:09
point where no matter what we do, we're going to continue to

01:49:14
see an increasingly overheated planet. And with with that, we

01:49:20
go into infinity over the edge. But there's also the other

01:49:26
tipping point where the this awareness is certainly growing.

01:49:33
The other tipping point about embracing the land the sea with

01:49:37
real care, hope spots, mission blue is one approach. Others

01:49:45
National Geographic has a project called pristine seas,

01:49:48
identifying some of these last wild places and doing whatever

01:49:52
is possible to encourage full protection. The United Nations

01:49:57
saying 30% by 2030 So there's this wave. If we could just tip

01:50:04
in the right direction instead of the wrong direction. We're on

01:50:08
a roll right now let's go for it. Let's protect the diversity

01:50:12
of life. Let's get the divers speaking with a sense of purpose

01:50:19
of doing their part. We come from such diverse backgrounds,

01:50:24
we who serve we who dive we could go to the sea and ships

01:50:28
where you would love nature, whatever, who the which, which

01:50:33
community you wish to be a part of, or part of all of them.

01:50:38
said, Yeah, do what you can. And let's let's go tipping.

01:50:47
Matt Waters: Yeah. And it's, it's communication.

01:50:49
Communication is key. If we have communication, we can tip in the

01:50:54
right direction. She don't know you can't care. Sylvia, I think,

01:51:03
I think I should let you get on with your day now. And, again, I

01:51:08
applaud you for everything you've done and continue to do.

01:51:12
And I appreciate you taking your time to come on the show.

01:51:15
Sylvia Earle: I salute you for what you're doing. It's, all in

01:51:19
this together. Yay!

01:51:25
Matt Waters: Thank you very much Silvia. And thank you all for

01:51:28
listening. Goodbye, everybody.

Sylvia A. Earle

National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence - National Geographic

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