The Incredible Woman Trying To Save the Ocean Before It's Too Late

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When I was a kid, we thought the ocean was too big to fail. Now we know better. — American Oceanographer Sylvia Earle

On a sailing trip around the Bahamas back in 2018, my partner and I had a chance to do some snorkeling around the many reefs in the area.

Before we arrived, I was super excited about the opportunity. I hadn’t done much snorkeling before, and I was picturing the breathtaking scenes I’d witnessed on TV and in National Geographic magazines.

Colorful reefs and countless schools of tropical fish danced in my head as I got my snorkel gear on, anticipating what was sure to be an amazing sight. But when I jumped in the turquoise water, this paradise was nowhere to be found. And it wasn’t just the first time we snorkeled, either. No matter where the ship anchored, the visions in my head didn’t match what I was seeing in real life. Reality was much different.

Rather than the impressive coral cities of all shapes, sizes, and colors, we saw a bed of dull grey-white below us. In some places, it looked like a pile of rubble, like everything that had once been there had just crumbled.

Each time I came back to the ship a little surprised, and a little disappointed. But no one was talking about it. None of the other guests or crew mentioned the state of the reefs, which made me wonder whether they’d even noticed. Was I just expecting too much? Was this normal?

These questions haunted me, especially because it seemed to be an untouchable subject. The whole experience felt off to me somehow, but I also felt guilty for being disappointed while on this unique adventure of a lifetime. Everyone wants to hear about how great your snorkeling experience was and how beautiful it is underwater, not about how you saw (what you believed) were mostly dead or dying reefs.

In recent months, a gnawing feeling brought me back to that bleak picture of a dying ocean embedded in my mind. I began to look into this further, watching countless documentaries and reading articles in National Geographic and other online sources. This led me to the one and only National Geographic oceanographer, Dr. Sylvia Earle.

Dr. Earle has been studying the ocean for much of her life and has spent thousands of hours underwater, bringing the ocean to life for the rest of us. As a scientist, explorer, and conservationist, she is one of the planet’s most respected authorities on a world most of us know very little about, and some of us have never experienced for ourselves: the underwater world.

For decades, she’s been our eyes and ears, reporting on what’s going on below the surface. And unfortunately, it’s not good news.

In recent decades, she’s witnessed massive and rapid changes to the ocean’s ecosystems, in large part due to overfishing on factory-scale levels, as well as global warming, pollution, and deep-sea mining—all factors involving humans and our impact on the natural world.

In the documentary, Sea of Hope: America’s Underwater Treasures, Dr. Earle says:

Change is happening fast. We’re losing coral reefs. We’re losing fish in the ocean, and whole ecosystems are coming apart, unraveling. The chemistry of the planet is being affected by what we’re putting into the ocean or taking out of the ocean.

She says it’s a totally different world now than when she first began diving—and that’s the problem. According to the documentary, offshore America (the surrounding waters the U.S. has laid claim to) is larger than its land area, but unlike on land, almost none of it is protected. This leaves the ocean vulnerable to severe under-regulation and completely unsustainable fishing practices.

In the film, Dr. Earle explains, “Now we know what we could not know when I was a kid, that the ocean governs climate, absorbs much of the heat, and regulates temperature.” Healthy oceans are vital to the health of the planet, and the more we destroy these ecosystems, the more damage we do to our above-sea world as well.

2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, the government department created to safeguard certain areas of the U.S. deemed naturally or culturally significant. National Parks preserve some of the country’s most beautiful places and protect important and diverse ecosystems for the health of the planet and the enjoyment of the people who visit them.

Max Kennedy, the documentary’s narrator and boat captain says, “National parks protect America’s natural treasures on the land. The same must be done for the ocean. It is a frontier in peril.”

This is where Dr. Earle comes in. She’s on a mission to create an underwater version of national parks, known as marine protected areas. These would be “no-take zones,” where fishing of any kind is prohibited and where sea creatures are able to flourish untouched.

Just like on land, when the natural world is left alone and the plants and animals aren’t targeted and hunted by humans for our use and consumption, life thrives. Given the opportunity, species are able to bounce back over time, and wild animal populations can recover.

Scientists like Dr. Earle are telling us that this is what needs to be done for marine life as well.

“We have an opportunity that will never come again,” she urges.

It’s truly a race against time.

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