Sylvia Earle

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Dr. Sylvia Earle

After winning the TED 2009 Prize
Born August 30, 1935
Gibbstown, New Jersey
Residence Oakland, California
Nationality American
Fields oceanography
Alma mater B.S., Florida State University; M.S. & Ph.D., Duke University

Sylvia Earle is an American oceanographer. She was chief scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1990-1992. She is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, sometimes called "Her Deepness" or "The Sturgeon General".[1]

Contents

[edit] Early Life and Education

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Sylvia Alice Earle was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey on August 30, 1935. She was raised on a small farm and from the time she was very small, she loved exploring. She was fascinated by the creatures and plants that lived in the wilderness around her home. Neither of her parents had a college education, but they loved nature and they taught young Sylvia to respect wild creatures and not to be afraid of the unknown. Those who have followed Earle's adult career wonder if she is afraid of anything.

When Sylvia was 13, the family moved to Dunedin, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico. Soon, Sylvia was learning all she could about the wildlife of the Gulf and its coast. Her parents could not afford to send her to college themselves, but she was an exceptional student and won scholarships to Florida State University, where she received her B.S. degree in 1955. Throughout her school years, Sylvia supported herself by working in college laboratories.

In Florida, Sylvia first learned scuba diving and developed the determination to use this new technology to study marine life from a close-up vantage point in the sea. Fascinated by all aspects of the ocean and marine life, Sylvia decided to specialize in botany. Understanding the vegetation, she believes, is the first step to understanding any ecosystem.

After earning her Master's at Duke University in 1956, Sylvia Earle took time off to marry and start a family but remained active in marine exploration. In 1964, when her children were only two and four, she left home for six weeks to join a National Science Foundation expedition in the Indian Ocean. Throughout the mid-1960s, she struggled to balance the demands of her family with scientific expeditions that took her all over the world.

In 1966, Sylvia Earle received her Ph.D. from Duke. Her dissertation Phaeophyta of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico created a sensation in the oceanographic community. Never before had a marine scientist made such a long and detailed firsthand study of aquatic plant life. Since then, Earle has made a lifelong project of cataloging every species of plant that can be found in the Gulf of Mexico.

Earle went on to become the Curator of Phycology at the California Academy of Sciences (1979-1986) and a Research Associate at the University of California, Berkeley (1969-1981), Radcliffe Institute Scholar (1967-1969) and Research Fellow or Associate at Harvard University (1967-1981). In 1968, Earle traveled to a hundred feet below the waters of the Bahamas in the submersible Deep Diver. She was four months pregnant at the time.

In 1969 she applied to participate in the Tektite project. This venture, sponsored jointly by the U.S. Navy, the Department of the Interior and NASA allowed teams of scientist to live for weeks at a time in an enclosed habitat on the ocean floor fifty feet below the surface, off the Virgin Islands. By this time, Sylvia had spent more than a thousand research hours underwater, more than any other scientists who applied to the program, but, as she says, "the people in charge just couldn't cope with the idea of men and women living together underwater."

The result was Tektite II, Mission 6, an all-female research expedition led by Earle herself. In 1970, Earle led the first team of women aquanauts during the Tektite Project in 1970. She and four other women dove 50 feet below the surface to the small structure they would call home for the next two weeks. The publicity surrounding this adventure made Sylvia Earle a recognizable face beyond the scientific community. To their surprise, the scientists found they had become celebrities and were given a ticker-tape parade and a White House reception. After that Sylvia Earle was increasingly in demand as public speaker, and she became an outspoken advocate of undersea research. At the same time, she began to write for National Geographic and to produce books and films. Besides trying to arouse greater public interest in the sea, she hoped to raise public awareness of the damage being done to our aquasphere by pollution and environmental degradation.

In the 1970s, scientific missions took Sylvia Earle to the Galapagos, to the water off Panama, to China and the Bahamas and, again, to the Indian Ocean. During this period she began a productive collaboration with undersea photographer Al Giddings. Together, they investigated the battleship graveyard in the Caroline Islands of the South Pacific. In 1977 they made their first voyage following the great sperm whales. In a series of expeditions they followed the whales from Hawaii to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Bermuda and Alaska. Their journeys were recorded in the documentary film Gentle Giants of the Pacific (1980).

In 1979, she made an open-ocean JIM suit dive, setting a women's depth record of 1250 feet (381m). Sylvia Earle walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any living human being before or since. She also holds the women's record for a solo dive in a deep submersible(3280 feet, 1000m). At the bottom, she detached from the vessel and explored the depths for two and a half hours with only a communication line connecting her to the submersible, and nothing at all connecting her to the world above. She described this adventure in her 1980 book: Exploring the Deep Frontier.

From 1980 to 1984 she served on NACOA (the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere).In 1985 she founded Deep Ocean Engineering along with her husband, engineer and submersible designer Graham Hawkes, to design, operate, support, and consult on piloted and robotic sub sea systems. In 1987 The Deep Ocean Engineering team designed and built the Deep Rover research submarine, which operates down to 1000 meters. She left the company in 1990 to accept an appointment as the Chief Scientist for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration).

In the early 1990s, Earle took a leave of absence from her companies to serve as Chief Scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. There, among other duties, Sylvia Earle was responsible for monitoring the health of the nation's waters. In this capacity she also reported on the environmental damage wrought by Iraq's burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields.

In 1992, Earle founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research to further advance marine engineering. Today, Earle serves as Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society and the company known as DOER Marine is run by her daughter. The company continues to design, build and operate innovative equipment for the deep ocean and other challenging environments.

Today, Earle is Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society. More recently, she led the Google Ocean Advisory Council, a team of 30 marine scientists providing content and scientific oversight for the "Ocean in Google Earth." To date, she has led over 70 expeditions, logging more than 6500 hours underwater. Among the more than 100 national and international honors she has received is the 2009 TED Prize for her proposal to establish a global network of marine protected areas. She calls these marine preserves "hope spots... to save and restore... the blue heart of the planet."

[edit] Accomplishments

Earle has led more than 400 expeditions worldwide involving in excess of 7000 hours underwater in connection with her research.[2] From 1998 to 2002 she led the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a five year program to study the United States National Marine Sanctuary sponsored by the National Geographic Society and funded by the Goldman Foundation. An expert on the impact of oil spills, she was called upon to lead several research trips during the Gulf War and following the spills of the ships, Exxon Valdez and Mega Borg.

She is the author of more than 125 publications concerning marine science and technology including the books Exploring the Deep Frontier, Sea Change (1995), Wild Ocean: America's Parks Under the Sea (1999) and The Atlas of the Ocean (2001), she has participated in numerous television productions and given scientific, technical, and general interest lectures in more than 60 countries. Children's books that she has written include Coral Reefs, Hello Fish, Sea Critters, and Dive!

[edit] Awards

  • Earle was named Time magazine's first "hero for the planet" in 1998.
  • Earle won the TED Prize in 2009
  • The Wings Trust Award 2003,
  • the Ding Darling Conservation Medal, 1999,
  • the Barbie Ambassador of Dreams, 1999,
  • the John M. Olguin Marine Environment Award, 1997,
  • the Bal de la Mer Foundation Sea Keeper Award 1997,
  • Julius B. Stratton Leadership Award, 1997,
  • Marine Technology Society Compass Award 1997,
  • Kilby Award 1997,
  • Explorers Club Medal 1996,
  • the Lindberg Award 1996,
  • Boston Museum of Science Washburn Medal 1995,
  • Massachusetts Audubon Society's Allen Morgan Prize 1995,
  • Directors Award of the Natural Resources Defense Council 1992,
  • DEMA Hall of Fame Award 1991,
  • Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 1991,
  • Radcliff College Alumnae Association Medal 1990, Society of Women Geographers Gold Medal 1990, New England Aquarium's David B. Stone Medal 1989,
  • Knight in the Netherlands Order of the Golden Arkby the Prince of the Netherlands 1981,
  • Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award 1980,
  • Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year 1970,
  • U.S. Department of Interior Conservation Service Award 1970.
  • National Women's Hall of Fame, October, 2000
Sylvia Earle displays samples to aquanaut inside TEKTITE

[edit] Media

Earle has been profiled for the National Geographic Explorer program (1987), Life Magazine (1987), The New Yorker (1989), New York Times Magazine (1991), Parade Magazine (1991), Tomorrow Magazine (1991), Scientific American (1992), Current Biographies (1972 and 1992), ABC TV 20/20 (1992, 1995), The Charlie Rose show (1993), The Lauren Hutton Show, CBS Sunday Morning (1995), TIME Magazine (1998), CNN (1998), USA Today (1999), People Magazine (2000), Pure Oxygen (2001), Vanity Fair (2002), TLC's Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden (2003), and CNN's Seeking Solutions with Suzanne (2003), to name a few.

Other media:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/front/adventurers/Sylvia.asp
  2. ^ Home Page for Sylvia Earle

[edit] Quotes

I want to get out in the water. I want to see fish, real fish, not fish in a laboratory
—Sylvia Earle
I can still feel that leap of enthusiasm, and real joy, at the prospect of finally getting out to the beach, and running around. But probably the most important thing, to me, aside from just the freedom of it and the power of it, was the kind of creatures that you could see along the beach, that you can't find anywhere else
—Sylvia Earle

[edit] Further reading

  • Earle, Sylvia (1996). Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0449910652. 
  • Earle, Sylvia (1999). Dive: My Adventures In the Deep Frontier. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271440. 
  • Earle, Sylvia and Linda K. Glover (2008). Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas (National Geographic Atlas). National Geographic. ISBN 1426203195. 
  • Earle, Sylvia (2001). Hello, Fish!: Visiting The Coral Reef. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792266978. 
  • Cancelmo, Jesse and Sylvia Earle (2008). Texas Coral Reefs (Gulf Coast Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446335. 
  • Earle, Sylvia. Editors John W., Jr. Tunnell, Ernesto A. Chavez, Kim Withers (2007). Coral Reefs of the Southern Gulf of Mexico (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446173. 
  • Earle, Sylvia (2000). Sea Critters. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271815. 
  • Rozwadowski, Helen M., and Sylvia Earle (Foreword) (2005). Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674016912. 
  • Earle, Sylvia, Ed. and Linda K. Glover, Ed. (2004). Defying Ocean's End: An Agenda For Action. Island Press. ISBN 1559637552. 
  • Earle, Sylvia (2003). Jump into Science: Coral Reefs. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792269535. 
  • Earle, Sylvia (2001). National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean: The Deep Frontier. National Geographic. ISBN 0792264266. 
  • Earle, Sylvia and Ellen J. Prager (2001). The Oceans. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0071381775. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle"
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