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— whatever they are. It just gives me such a jolt of joy when
I see some familiar pals out there.” She can’t say for sure she
has a favorite, but if pressed she will tell you she has a special
fondness for groupers. “They are just so alert and so curious and
uninhibited, and that’s what gets them into trouble — they’re
curious about hooks with bait on them,” she said. “But they
follow you around with their big eyes, looking at you — and
not as if they want to take a bite out of you. It seems they’re
just curious, and I don’t think it has to go much deeper than
that. Well, barracuda are curious; a lot of fish are, squids are,
octopuses are, little kids are, scientists are, you are, I am. Maybe
it’s just the nature of those with the right attitude.”
A great majority of the ocean — about 95 percent of it —
remains unexplored, even in relatively shallow depths, and Earle
relishes every opportunity to plumb the deep areas. “There
are some places that have received disproportionate attention
when compared to the ocean as a whole, like popular dive
sites, for example, but it’s still possible, even in coastal areas,
to find places that have not been explored underwater,” she
said. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean these places haven’t
been exploited. The ocean is increasingly accessible to those
who want to take from it. That’s true even in deep water well
beyond where divers go. In the Gulf of California, for example,
deep trawls rake up shrimp from thousands of feet beneath the
surface, and nobody has ever even been down there.”
A priority for Mission Blue is to gain more access to the
deep ocean, not only for exploration but for conservation as
well. Earle has spent hundreds of hours in submersibles and has
firsthand knowledge of their value in such endeavors. “Having
access through remotely-operated-vehicle (ROV) camera
systems provides a lot of information,” she said. “They’re great,
but it’s no more like actually being down there than looking at
photographs of a fine restaurant in Paris is the same as being
there drinking wine and enjoying good company — it’s just not
the same.” Having worked with both ROV and submersible
systems during my career, I agree with her assessment. In
a submersible you can follow hunches, and being in the
water sharpens your senses — you can make choices based
on seeing things out of the corner of your eye. As astronaut
Cathy Sullivan put it, “A machine can’t tell you why it wants to
explore, but human beings can.”
Making a Difference
During the past four years members of Earle’s SEA
foundation have spent time in shallower areas as well,
visiting Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, Cocos Island and
Panama. Working with local scientists, conservation leaders
and SEA board members, the team has helped push for
greater protection in areas that have none and areas with
some protection but no enforcement.
Along the way they have produced short documentary
films about these locations, written dozens of blog posts
and highlighted science and conservation programs while
working on site. In 2009, for example, the team released
an award-winning film called Isla Holbox: Whale Shark
Island after one of their expeditions. Holbox is home to
a traditional Mexican fishing village and is an important
destination for whale sharks — and now tourists eager to see
these great creatures in the wild.
In addition to making films, the SEA foundation is also
educating people about hope spots using Google Earth. In
the program’s ocean layer, people can take virtual dives in
some hope spot areas including the Galapagos, the Gulf of
Mexico and Hawaii.
The future for Mission Blue looks busy and bright, and if
Earle has her way we will see a sharp increase in the number of
MPAs around the world. After decades of overfishing, pollution
and climate change, we are threatening the very foundation of
our life-support system— and the future of mankind. As Earle
puts it, “No blue, no green.” Through Mission Blue, she hopes to
help increase the size of protected marine habitats from less than
one percent to at least 20 percent of the world’s oceans by 2020.
“There is just one hope spot” she says. “It is the mostly-blue
Earth. Fifty years ago we did not appreciate the limits to what we
can put into the ocean or the consequences to what we take out.
Fifty years from now, if present trends continue, it will be too
late to do what now is possible. As never before, this is the time
to act to secure an enduring future for humankind.”
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GO ONLINE
Mission Blue — http://mission-blue.org
The Sylvia Earle Alliance — www.thesealliance.org
www.alertdiver.com
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