Dr. Sylvia Earle is a renowned oceanographer and marine biologist with over six decades of experience. Her interest in the seas started when she was as young as 8 years old. She lived in Dunedin, Florida as a child, and she has credited this place for fostering her interest in nature and wildlife. Her mother was a wildlife rehabilitator, and so her childhood was filled with recuperating animals, her mother’s unique patients, in their living room. Earle went on to receive a Doctorate in Phycology, the study of phytoplankton or algae, from Duke University. She began her career as a research marine biologist, taking roles as a fellow at Harvard University, curator of phycology in the California Academy of Sciences, and a research associate at the University of California, Berkeley. After around two years as a resident director at Florida’s Cape Haze Marine Laboratory, she became a part of the Tektite II Project, which enabled marine biologists to remain in close proximity underwater to their point of study for weeks. This was a team of all female “aquanauts”. She set the women’s dive record of 1,250 feet with a JIM suit near Hawaii. She then was on the board of the National Advisory Council for the Ocean and founded, with her husband at the time Graham Hawkes, Deep Ocean Engineering, which built the Deep Rover submarine. After her trips on the Deep Rover, she decided to work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or the NOAA, as their first female chief scientist. Her projects included examining the environmental destruction from the Persian Gulf Wars to uncover what happened to Kuwait’s oil wells. In 1998, Earle was selected to be National Geographic’s Explorer in Residence, nicknamed the “Sturgeon General” and “Her Deepness”. She has led projects including the Sustainable Seas Expedition, which lasted from 1998 to 2002. Her next mission was to start Mission Blue, an organization which has increased the number of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) dubbed “Hope Spots” in the world. She has started several expeditions including NOAA’s aquarius underwater laboratory, Deepwater 2000, and consultation for the British Petroleum Oil Spill of 2010. Dr. Earle persists in her fight to ensure clean oceans for everyone in the world through her work with Mission Blue, which has documented 30+ MPAs globally, garnered the support of Former President Obama, and is funded by Rolex, Google, and National Geographic.

Dr. Sylvia Earle’s values and approach to ocean conservation, and more generally environmental protection as a whole, has greatly influenced my environmental value systems. She has served on several advisory councils, given UN speeches, and helped pass marine protection laws, demonstrating her anthropocentric environmental manager side of work. Earle has researched for several decades on phycology and marine biology and created submarines and other deep sea exploration materials, showing her technocentric mentality. But above all, with Earle’s ecocentric state of mind, she advocates for “Hope Spots”, pushing for places in which nature has the ability to heal itself. Dr. Earle’s effective incorporation of all three value systems into her environmental activism has strongly helped me create my unique viewpoint. I, too, aspire to integrate political decisions, scientific research, and natural conservation to aid in our planet’s protection. Earle’s promotion of Hope Spots showed me that nature just needs the space to revive itself, her intergovernmental work indicated to me the need for global alliances and human social structures like laws to improve our treatment of our planet, and Dr. Earle’s research and studies prove the need for technology and breaking scientific (and social for women in STEM) barriers to discover new methods of conserving nature. In following Dr. Sylvia Earle’s work, I have realized that there is no one correct perspective that will save our planet, but it is rather the intersection of viewpoints that will increase cooperation to preserve the fate of our future.