1 00:00:51,801 --> 00:00:53,095 [INDISTINCT TALKING OVER RADIO] 2 00:01:27,337 --> 00:01:28,505 [SYLVIA EARLE] Look at this. 3 00:01:28,588 --> 00:01:32,008 It's an ocean full of whale sharks. 4 00:01:32,091 --> 00:01:36,554 I can't even count the number of fins. 5 00:01:36,638 --> 00:01:39,724 Are we awake or are we... [CHUCKLES] are we still dreaming? 6 00:01:57,284 --> 00:01:59,786 They've been living here for millions of years. 7 00:02:01,329 --> 00:02:04,291 We're newcomers in their backyard. 8 00:02:08,503 --> 00:02:11,047 I love being a part of their world. 9 00:02:11,131 --> 00:02:14,634 They're completely innocent of anything humans do. 10 00:02:45,540 --> 00:02:48,710 Since the oil spill, this group of whale sharks, 11 00:02:48,793 --> 00:02:51,546 the largest ever witnessed in the Northern Gulf... 12 00:02:51,629 --> 00:02:54,131 has not been seen there again. 13 00:03:18,865 --> 00:03:22,577 Guess we'll put this little... beast inside. 14 00:03:22,660 --> 00:03:25,413 There you go. Thank you. 15 00:03:30,335 --> 00:03:36,341 In the last few years, I'm on the road... probably 300 days out of the lot. 16 00:03:36,424 --> 00:03:42,054 And I give a lot of talks... some days just from dawn to dusk. 17 00:03:44,098 --> 00:03:48,311 I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing... other than diving. 18 00:03:49,312 --> 00:03:53,775 [HUGH DOWNS] Aren't you a radical about protecting the oceans? 19 00:03:54,734 --> 00:03:59,656 If I seem like a radical, it may be because I see things that others do not. 20 00:04:02,074 --> 00:04:06,413 I think if others had the opportunity to witness what I have seen in my lifetime, 21 00:04:06,496 --> 00:04:08,039 what I see when I go diving 22 00:04:08,122 --> 00:04:11,626 and the perspective that I've gained from thousands of hours underwater, 23 00:04:11,709 --> 00:04:14,837 I would not seem like a radical at all. 24 00:04:14,921 --> 00:04:16,839 [MALE NEWSCASTER] She has seen with her own eyes, 25 00:04:16,923 --> 00:04:19,342 parts of this Earth few others could even imagine. 26 00:04:19,426 --> 00:04:23,846 Sylvia Earle, this country's foremost oceanographer, 27 00:04:23,930 --> 00:04:26,891 exploring depths thought impossible to reach. 28 00:04:26,974 --> 00:04:29,311 [HILLARY CLINTON] It's a pleasure to introduce a scientist, 29 00:04:29,394 --> 00:04:33,690 an engineer, a teacher and an explorer, 30 00:04:33,773 --> 00:04:36,526 - Dr. Sylvia Alice Earle. - [APPLAUSE] 31 00:04:49,956 --> 00:04:55,545 [EARLE] I can see in my mind's eye... a different world, 32 00:04:55,628 --> 00:04:59,924 a world that's changed enormously just in my lifetime. 33 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:06,889 Sixty years ago, when I began exploring the ocean, 34 00:05:06,973 --> 00:05:09,934 no one imagined that we could do anything to harm it. 35 00:05:10,852 --> 00:05:14,188 It seemed at that time to be a sea of Eden. 36 00:05:15,189 --> 00:05:18,818 But now, we're facing paradise lost. 37 00:05:20,737 --> 00:05:22,739 And this is not, "Woe is me," 38 00:05:22,822 --> 00:05:25,408 this is just the reality of what's happening. 39 00:05:25,492 --> 00:05:29,036 But it's also the reality, we have a chance to fix things. 40 00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:30,372 [ELEVATOR BELL DINGS] 41 00:05:31,498 --> 00:05:32,915 [ANNOUNCER] Please welcome Dr. Sylvia Earle. 42 00:05:32,999 --> 00:05:34,376 [AUDIENCE APPLAUDING] 43 00:05:38,004 --> 00:05:39,213 [FISHER STEVENS] On any given night, 44 00:05:39,296 --> 00:05:42,174 Sylvia Earle can be found in Norwalk, Connecticut, 45 00:05:42,258 --> 00:05:45,845 or Stockholm, Sweden, or Cape Town, South Africa. 46 00:05:45,928 --> 00:05:48,222 [ANNOUNCER] Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle. 47 00:05:49,098 --> 00:05:50,099 [AUDIENCE CHEERING] 48 00:05:50,182 --> 00:05:54,729 [STEVENS] In Beijing, Belfast, Davos or the Galapagos Islands. 49 00:05:57,314 --> 00:05:59,025 [EARLE] Think of the changes that have occurred 50 00:05:59,108 --> 00:06:02,779 in the world in the lifetime of a 200-year-old orange roughy. 51 00:06:03,780 --> 00:06:08,117 But they don't know why their world has changed. 52 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:11,413 [STEVENS] And that's where I met her, at a sort of ocean summit. 53 00:06:11,496 --> 00:06:14,331 I'm a big scuba diver. I love the oceans. 54 00:06:14,416 --> 00:06:16,000 I love them more now that I've met Sylvia, 55 00:06:16,083 --> 00:06:20,171 but, um, it's also people like... like you in this room 56 00:06:20,254 --> 00:06:21,839 that can save the ocean. 57 00:06:21,923 --> 00:06:24,383 The world's largest fishery was, 58 00:06:24,467 --> 00:06:26,719 and still the largest fishery in the US, 59 00:06:26,803 --> 00:06:30,432 is Alaskan pollock, and it's moving into the Arctic. 60 00:06:30,515 --> 00:06:32,684 [BARBARA BLOCK] Bluefin are pursued wherever they go. 61 00:06:32,767 --> 00:06:36,479 It's really wiping bluefin ecologically off the planet. 62 00:06:36,563 --> 00:06:41,818 If we fail to take care of the ocean... nothing else matters. 63 00:06:41,901 --> 00:06:44,904 [CHEERING] 64 00:06:44,987 --> 00:06:46,448 [LAUGHING] 65 00:06:56,040 --> 00:06:58,918 [STEVENS] I've been diving for over half my life now... 66 00:06:59,001 --> 00:07:03,297 but that is nothing compared to her. 67 00:07:03,380 --> 00:07:07,343 She's been exploring the ocean since before I was born. 68 00:07:07,426 --> 00:07:09,846 Sylvia, that turtle was a trip! 69 00:07:09,929 --> 00:07:12,389 - And she came back here. - Yeah! 70 00:07:12,474 --> 00:07:17,019 She went up, got a breath of air, came right back to that same place. 71 00:07:17,103 --> 00:07:19,772 [STEVENS] I spent one week with Sylvia and I was hooked. 72 00:07:19,856 --> 00:07:22,609 - Gular flutter. - Gular flutter. 73 00:07:22,692 --> 00:07:26,028 [STEVENS] How could I have not known who she was before? 74 00:07:27,404 --> 00:07:29,406 After the Galapagos trip, 75 00:07:29,491 --> 00:07:32,869 I really didn't wanna leave Sylvia's world. 76 00:07:32,952 --> 00:07:34,328 So I didn't. 77 00:07:42,003 --> 00:07:43,713 [MAN] Is that her? [STEVENS] Yeah, yeah. That's her. 78 00:07:43,796 --> 00:07:45,214 That's her. There she is. 79 00:07:46,758 --> 00:07:49,051 Thank you! 80 00:07:49,135 --> 00:07:50,803 What a beautiful place. 81 00:07:50,887 --> 00:07:52,680 [STEVENS] What I didn't realize at the time... 82 00:07:52,764 --> 00:07:55,933 was that this would be the beginning of a three-year odyssey... 83 00:07:57,101 --> 00:08:01,230 a chance to see the ocean and the world through Sylvia's eyes. 84 00:08:02,273 --> 00:08:05,192 [STEVENS] Sylvia, the minute I met you, you became an example for me. 85 00:08:05,276 --> 00:08:07,737 Like, seriously. 86 00:08:09,906 --> 00:08:12,992 [STEVENS] Just take me back to how you became so passionate 87 00:08:13,075 --> 00:08:15,244 about the ocean. 88 00:08:15,327 --> 00:08:17,288 [EARLE] Well, it all started in New Jersey. 89 00:08:22,710 --> 00:08:28,424 As a kid, I had complete freedom to go play in the woods, 90 00:08:28,508 --> 00:08:31,928 to spend all day out, just fooling around. 91 00:08:32,011 --> 00:08:33,721 On my own, often. 92 00:08:33,805 --> 00:08:37,391 I mean, a lot of the time, just on my own. 93 00:08:37,474 --> 00:08:41,103 ♪ Left bank, I'm waiting for someone ♪ 94 00:08:41,187 --> 00:08:44,982 ♪ Someone to be my friend ♪ 95 00:08:45,900 --> 00:08:50,279 My mother was known as the bird lady of the neighborhood. 96 00:08:50,362 --> 00:08:53,700 People would bring injured squirrels, birds, frogs... 97 00:08:53,783 --> 00:08:56,035 anything that needed help. 98 00:08:56,118 --> 00:08:58,037 ♪ Without you... ♪ 99 00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:04,877 My father, who was really so bright and so capable of fixing things. 100 00:09:04,961 --> 00:09:08,214 When I was a little kid, I'd try to take things apart to see how they worked 101 00:09:08,297 --> 00:09:12,760 and he always reminded me to save all the pieces, don't lose any, 102 00:09:12,844 --> 00:09:15,680 and be sure you know how to put it back together again. 103 00:09:16,513 --> 00:09:18,808 ♪ I can't hold the sun ♪ 104 00:09:19,809 --> 00:09:21,310 We're losing a lot of the parts... 105 00:09:21,393 --> 00:09:23,730 the loss of the diversity of life on Earth... 106 00:09:23,813 --> 00:09:26,816 the bits and pieces have just disappeared... 107 00:09:26,899 --> 00:09:30,570 and we don't know how to put things back together again once they're gone. 108 00:09:33,447 --> 00:09:36,659 When I was 12, we picked up and moved to Florida. 109 00:09:37,827 --> 00:09:43,750 At first, I was not particularly charmed, because I loved the other place so much. 110 00:09:47,086 --> 00:09:52,508 But the Gulf of Mexico was this great blue body of water 111 00:09:52,592 --> 00:09:56,888 that created almost this mythic place that lured my parents there. 112 00:09:58,514 --> 00:10:00,307 Some kids play in the streets. 113 00:10:00,391 --> 00:10:01,809 Some kids have a backyard 114 00:10:01,893 --> 00:10:03,645 and my backyard was wet. 115 00:10:03,728 --> 00:10:06,773 It was the Gulf of Mexico. It was glorious. 116 00:10:10,317 --> 00:10:12,111 That's where I first fell in love with the ocean. 117 00:10:13,154 --> 00:10:15,072 I could see it. I could hear it. 118 00:10:15,156 --> 00:10:16,866 I could smell it. I could touch it. 119 00:10:16,949 --> 00:10:18,660 I could splash around in it. 120 00:10:21,537 --> 00:10:25,541 I loved when seaweed came ashore in huge amounts. 121 00:10:25,625 --> 00:10:28,377 It was like going to the zoo. 122 00:10:30,630 --> 00:10:33,382 I had fun finding these creatures... like little crabs. 123 00:10:33,465 --> 00:10:37,428 You could take them and then gently put them back into the ocean, 124 00:10:37,511 --> 00:10:38,888 and they'd scurry off. 125 00:10:42,099 --> 00:10:45,186 It was just heaven for a kid... for me. 126 00:10:46,187 --> 00:10:49,440 It will always be that way in my mind, it's just this paradise. 127 00:10:54,070 --> 00:10:56,613 [FEMALE NEWSCASTER] Happening now, an explosion and fire 128 00:10:56,698 --> 00:11:00,076 devastate a massive oil rig off the Louisiana coast. 129 00:11:00,159 --> 00:11:02,453 [MALE NEWSCASTER 1] Last week's deadly oil rig blowout 130 00:11:02,536 --> 00:11:04,080 remains unchecked tonight. 131 00:11:04,163 --> 00:11:06,708 And it's raising fears of an environmental disaster in the making. 132 00:11:06,791 --> 00:11:11,087 [MALE NEWSCASTER 2] As long as the oil is flowing down here in the Gulf, 133 00:11:11,170 --> 00:11:14,006 this will simply keep growing and growing and growing, 134 00:11:14,090 --> 00:11:18,094 and they have no idea where the end will be. 135 00:11:19,636 --> 00:11:23,140 [STEVENS] How'd you feel? What was your first reaction? 136 00:11:23,224 --> 00:11:25,059 [EARLE] It was shocking. 137 00:11:25,142 --> 00:11:29,146 And it just got worse as the news unfolded. 138 00:11:29,230 --> 00:11:32,984 Of course, the tragedy was the human lives lost. 139 00:11:34,736 --> 00:11:39,782 Then this gush of oil wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop! 140 00:11:47,248 --> 00:11:49,375 When I was a child living in Florida, 141 00:11:49,458 --> 00:11:53,337 there was only one offshore oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. 142 00:11:53,420 --> 00:11:58,050 Today, there are more than 33,000 drill sites. 143 00:11:59,886 --> 00:12:06,308 All of us... we are the beneficiaries of having burned through fossil fuels. 144 00:12:06,392 --> 00:12:09,478 Coal, gas, oil. 145 00:12:09,561 --> 00:12:11,188 But at what cost? 146 00:12:20,990 --> 00:12:24,827 I really come to speak for the ocean. 147 00:12:24,911 --> 00:12:29,832 We put billions into what takes us into the skies above... 148 00:12:29,916 --> 00:12:32,919 and it's paying off handsomely. 149 00:12:33,002 --> 00:12:36,755 We've neglected the ocean... and it's costing us dearly. 150 00:12:38,007 --> 00:12:40,467 [JACKSON] The thing that's impressive to me about Sylvia 151 00:12:40,551 --> 00:12:43,846 is that she's not afraid to point fingers... 152 00:12:43,930 --> 00:12:48,392 and say, "You know what you're doing, and it's wrong." 153 00:12:49,393 --> 00:12:51,896 [JAMES CAMERON] You know, she's kind of the Joan of Arc of the oceans. 154 00:12:51,979 --> 00:12:53,940 - [MAN] Go! - She's the one that's out in front 155 00:12:54,023 --> 00:12:57,276 leading the charge in the fight to save the ocean. 156 00:12:57,359 --> 00:13:01,655 And she's made it her life's purpose in the last couple of decades 157 00:13:01,738 --> 00:13:05,993 to make sure everybody else understands what's going on and why it's important. 158 00:13:06,994 --> 00:13:09,788 [EARLE] It's life itself that the ocean is delivering. 159 00:13:09,872 --> 00:13:11,582 This is a turning point. 160 00:13:12,583 --> 00:13:17,713 If we continue business as usual, we're in real trouble. 161 00:13:17,796 --> 00:13:20,632 [CARL SAFINA] Her passion for the ocean comes from the fact that... 162 00:13:20,716 --> 00:13:25,930 like myself and like many of us who were young... 163 00:13:26,013 --> 00:13:29,350 in a younger world around the ocean, 164 00:13:29,433 --> 00:13:33,770 we saw a place that was more full of life. 165 00:13:45,407 --> 00:13:48,911 [EARLE] It was... [SIGHS] beyond frustrating. 166 00:13:48,995 --> 00:13:51,455 It was agonizing. 167 00:13:51,538 --> 00:13:53,040 [BIRDS SQUAWKING] 168 00:13:56,710 --> 00:13:59,213 Because I know what's in the Gulf of Mexico. 169 00:14:10,099 --> 00:14:16,605 I just could flash back to times when I'd be diving in the Gulf of Mexico... 170 00:14:17,606 --> 00:14:19,942 when it was a place... 171 00:14:21,527 --> 00:14:24,113 [SIGHING] an underwater paradise. 172 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:31,453 And to know that it was vulnerable, that it could be right in the path of... 173 00:14:31,537 --> 00:14:33,789 of this... 174 00:14:33,873 --> 00:14:35,166 [SIGHS] 175 00:14:35,249 --> 00:14:37,751 This avalanche. 176 00:14:37,834 --> 00:14:40,296 It's just hard to express. 177 00:14:42,464 --> 00:14:49,430 YOUR BOOK, THE WORLD IS BLUE: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One. 178 00:14:50,431 --> 00:14:54,351 That's a bold statement. My fate and the ocean's are the same fate? 179 00:14:54,435 --> 00:14:56,103 I don't live in the ocean. 180 00:14:56,187 --> 00:14:57,563 I ain't got gills. 181 00:14:57,646 --> 00:14:59,731 Why should I care about what happens in the ocean? 182 00:14:59,815 --> 00:15:01,442 It's deep, it's dark, people drown in it 183 00:15:01,525 --> 00:15:02,568 and it's full of sharks 184 00:15:02,651 --> 00:15:04,028 - who want to eat us. - [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] 185 00:15:04,111 --> 00:15:05,821 Or don't you watch Shark Week? 186 00:15:06,822 --> 00:15:10,659 Yeah, I watch. But think of the world without an ocean. 187 00:15:10,742 --> 00:15:12,912 You've got a planet a lot like Mars. 188 00:15:14,163 --> 00:15:18,000 No convenient life support system. 189 00:15:18,084 --> 00:15:21,587 Most of the oxygen that you breathe, that everybody breathes, 190 00:15:21,670 --> 00:15:24,548 is generated by the ocean. 191 00:15:24,631 --> 00:15:28,260 And it absorbs much of the carbon dioxide. 192 00:15:33,015 --> 00:15:36,102 In a way, we're all sea creatures. 193 00:15:36,185 --> 00:15:39,396 Every whale, dolphin, coral reef, whatever... 194 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:43,317 they obviously need the ocean, but so do we. 195 00:15:43,400 --> 00:15:45,736 No ocean, no life. 196 00:15:45,819 --> 00:15:48,489 No ocean, no us. 197 00:15:51,867 --> 00:15:54,286 [STEVENS] So were you that geeky girl in high school? 198 00:15:54,370 --> 00:15:55,579 The science nerd? 199 00:15:56,538 --> 00:16:00,167 [EARLE] I suppose, in today's terminology, I would be regarded as a geek. 200 00:16:03,337 --> 00:16:07,299 People sometimes have a hard time figuring out what they want to do. 201 00:16:07,383 --> 00:16:11,928 I always wanted to be whatever it is that a scientist does, 202 00:16:12,013 --> 00:16:13,722 I just didn't know what to call it. 203 00:16:17,059 --> 00:16:19,520 There's a little library in Dunedin... 204 00:16:19,603 --> 00:16:20,896 that I used to haunt. 205 00:16:20,980 --> 00:16:25,901 I'd sit on the floor and that's where I first saw a book by William Beebe, 206 00:16:25,985 --> 00:16:29,071 and became entranced with the idea of submarines. 207 00:16:35,452 --> 00:16:38,747 His book, Half Mile Down, it was published in the '30s... 208 00:16:38,830 --> 00:16:41,500 described how he and Otis Barton 209 00:16:41,583 --> 00:16:45,171 crawled into this little steel ball with a tiny window in it, 210 00:16:45,254 --> 00:16:50,801 and could look out and see what it was like a half-mile beneath the surface. 211 00:16:52,553 --> 00:16:55,514 What it's like in the deep sea with these sparkling creatures 212 00:16:55,597 --> 00:17:00,227 that illuminate the sea below where light penetrates. 213 00:17:02,104 --> 00:17:06,983 So, I never got to meet William Beebe, but I regard him as a soul mate. 214 00:17:08,610 --> 00:17:09,820 [CRACKLING] 215 00:17:09,903 --> 00:17:11,197 [BUBBLING] 216 00:17:14,491 --> 00:17:20,664 Jacques Cousteau was able to vicariously, and sometimes directly, 217 00:17:20,747 --> 00:17:21,790 get people in the water. 218 00:17:21,873 --> 00:17:25,502 He got me in the water by inspiring me to say, 219 00:17:25,586 --> 00:17:28,255 "That's so cool! I wanna go! I wanna see it!" 220 00:17:31,217 --> 00:17:36,138 His Silent World made me want to see what he saw. 221 00:17:38,974 --> 00:17:44,855 To meet fish swimming in something other than lemon slices and butter on a plate. 222 00:17:44,938 --> 00:17:49,651 To actually go and witness this vast blue realm. 223 00:17:51,987 --> 00:17:57,243 [STEVENS] Before the 1950s, diving had been very risky and experimental... 224 00:17:57,326 --> 00:18:00,079 until Cousteau invented the Aqua-Lung, 225 00:18:00,162 --> 00:18:01,455 and became one of the first 226 00:18:01,538 --> 00:18:05,917 to use a Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, SCUBA. 227 00:18:06,001 --> 00:18:09,380 He showed how simple it could be to explore the sea. 228 00:18:12,007 --> 00:18:15,844 [EARLE] In the summer of 1953, I enrolled in a class in marine biology. 229 00:18:20,807 --> 00:18:23,144 My major professor somehow managed 230 00:18:23,227 --> 00:18:27,063 to get two of the very first scuba sets that were available. 231 00:18:27,148 --> 00:18:32,944 ♪ Come with me, my love ♪ 232 00:18:33,028 --> 00:18:35,572 ♪ To the sea ♪ 233 00:18:35,656 --> 00:18:38,450 ♪ The sea of love ♪ 234 00:18:38,534 --> 00:18:41,328 ♪ I want to tell you ♪ 235 00:18:41,412 --> 00:18:44,748 ♪ How much I love you ♪ 236 00:18:44,831 --> 00:18:49,753 It seemed so improbable. You can be underwater and breathe. 237 00:18:49,836 --> 00:18:53,424 ♪ Come with me ♪ 238 00:18:53,507 --> 00:18:55,426 Most of all, it was the gift of time. 239 00:18:56,510 --> 00:19:00,972 Be able to actually stay and watch the creatures that were there. 240 00:19:02,558 --> 00:19:06,937 And it made me want to always go deeper, stay longer. 241 00:19:25,080 --> 00:19:26,415 [STEVENS] Was there that moment, like in a movie, 242 00:19:26,498 --> 00:19:28,750 if we were in a movie of Sylvia Earle's life, like you're... 243 00:19:28,834 --> 00:19:31,002 - The "Ah-ha" moment? - [STEVENS] Yeah, somebody puts... 244 00:19:31,086 --> 00:19:32,754 You put the mask on and you're seeing, and you're, like, 245 00:19:32,838 --> 00:19:35,131 "Oh, my God, this is what I wanna do with the rest of my life." 246 00:19:35,216 --> 00:19:37,259 - Is that what happened? - I already knew. [LAUGHING] 247 00:19:41,722 --> 00:19:45,434 In the water, anyone can be a ballerina. 248 00:19:45,517 --> 00:19:49,521 You can stand on one finger. You can do... back rolls. 249 00:19:50,981 --> 00:19:56,278 You can look as if you are... the most graceful creature in the world. 250 00:19:57,529 --> 00:20:03,910 And along the way you see all this... this galaxy of life. 251 00:20:16,047 --> 00:20:18,133 You know, it's just exhilarating. 252 00:20:23,639 --> 00:20:28,685 If I can do it... you can do it. I'm not Superwoman. 253 00:20:28,769 --> 00:20:32,188 I'm not big and muscular. 254 00:20:32,273 --> 00:20:37,944 My mother, at 81... put on a mask and flippers and took on the ocean. 255 00:20:38,028 --> 00:20:39,363 And then she would tell people, 256 00:20:39,446 --> 00:20:43,575 "If you are 81, don't wait any longer. Just do it." 257 00:21:06,515 --> 00:21:08,600 [MALE ANCHOR] Thousands of delighted visitors 258 00:21:08,684 --> 00:21:12,145 are discovering the fun of a Florida Gulf Coast holiday. 259 00:21:13,855 --> 00:21:17,067 [EARLE] From the time I was a child, seeing Florida, 260 00:21:17,150 --> 00:21:20,571 what I thought was just wonderful wilderness... 261 00:21:20,654 --> 00:21:24,283 watching it change before my eyes. 262 00:21:24,366 --> 00:21:28,161 [MALE ANCHOR] The Tampa Bay area is one huge resort 263 00:21:28,244 --> 00:21:30,246 with gleaming new hotels and motels. 264 00:21:30,331 --> 00:21:34,042 [EARLE] To watch Tampa Bay getting dredged, 265 00:21:34,125 --> 00:21:37,338 taking what was a marsh and then putting a parking lot there, 266 00:21:37,421 --> 00:21:40,048 putting a housing development there. 267 00:21:40,131 --> 00:21:43,259 Watching the Weeki Wachee River as a witness, 268 00:21:43,344 --> 00:21:48,807 this crystal river... that starts with a spring like a morning glory. 269 00:21:48,890 --> 00:21:53,812 You look down, you see this blue throat that just seems to go into infinity, 270 00:21:53,895 --> 00:21:57,649 and then it spills out into a river that goes off into the Gulf 271 00:21:57,733 --> 00:22:02,028 in this water that's so clear it looks like there's no water there at all. 272 00:22:04,740 --> 00:22:10,787 And then development along the edge, just clouding that amazing water. 273 00:22:13,540 --> 00:22:16,752 The trees were starting to turn brown around the edge 274 00:22:16,835 --> 00:22:19,796 and all the grass was dead. 275 00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,341 It was... 276 00:22:22,424 --> 00:22:26,136 that kind of experience, a witness. 277 00:22:26,219 --> 00:22:28,013 I saw the before. 278 00:22:28,096 --> 00:22:33,143 I saw the after influence of what we can do to the natural world. 279 00:22:49,159 --> 00:22:52,413 [JACKSON] The Gulf of Mexico is this extraordinarily wonderful, 280 00:22:52,496 --> 00:22:55,457 productive, magnificent place 281 00:22:55,541 --> 00:22:58,835 that had the misfortune of being right on top of a ton of oil, 282 00:22:58,919 --> 00:23:03,381 and being the sewer for the people of the United States of America. 283 00:23:08,845 --> 00:23:11,557 [STEVENS] Call it the price of progress. 284 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:15,310 For six decades, big agriculture and industrial farming 285 00:23:15,393 --> 00:23:19,648 have affected the Gulf of Mexico from hundreds of miles away. 286 00:23:21,442 --> 00:23:24,486 [JACKSON] A little less than a third of all the corn grown in the entire world 287 00:23:24,570 --> 00:23:29,783 is grown in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota. 288 00:23:31,076 --> 00:23:32,828 That productivity is due to 289 00:23:32,911 --> 00:23:37,583 the application of humongous quantities of nitrogen fertilizer. 290 00:23:38,542 --> 00:23:42,921 All that fertilizer runs off the land, makes it into the Mississippi River, 291 00:23:43,004 --> 00:23:44,005 comes down the river... 292 00:23:44,965 --> 00:23:49,553 fuels extraordinary population explosions of phytoplankton, 293 00:23:49,636 --> 00:23:51,513 the stuff dies, it rots. 294 00:23:51,597 --> 00:23:53,640 When something rots, it uses up oxygen, 295 00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,644 and then anything that is alive, like crabs, little tiny fish, 296 00:23:57,728 --> 00:24:00,939 they can't hightail it out of there, they die. 297 00:24:01,022 --> 00:24:03,233 They die from no oxygen. 298 00:24:03,316 --> 00:24:05,401 Boom, that's the dead zone. 299 00:24:07,028 --> 00:24:08,780 [EARLE] The Gulf of Mexico already hosts 300 00:24:08,864 --> 00:24:11,992 one of the most notorious dead zones on the planet. 301 00:24:12,075 --> 00:24:15,662 The Deepwater Horizon spill just made things a lot worse. 302 00:24:16,747 --> 00:24:22,836 Around the world, hundreds of dead zones have formed just in the past few decades. 303 00:24:29,009 --> 00:24:31,136 [STEVENS] So let's be honest. 304 00:24:31,219 --> 00:24:33,263 You're 18. You're very beautiful. 305 00:24:33,346 --> 00:24:36,224 Aren't all your friends going off, getting married? 306 00:24:36,307 --> 00:24:40,353 And did that ever... No, you're like work, all about work? 307 00:24:40,436 --> 00:24:42,856 I'm not abnormal. 308 00:24:44,232 --> 00:24:47,694 Of course I enjoyed dating boys and so on. 309 00:24:47,778 --> 00:24:49,362 But I wasn't interested in anybody 310 00:24:49,445 --> 00:24:51,447 who wasn't interested in what I was interested in. 311 00:24:52,407 --> 00:24:56,327 It's just very self-centered, I suppose, but I just... 312 00:24:56,411 --> 00:25:00,165 Football-schmootball. I mean [SCOFFS] "Who cares about that?" I thought. 313 00:25:01,416 --> 00:25:04,210 I was attracted to the nerdy types, I suppose, 314 00:25:04,294 --> 00:25:08,214 who loved talking about the stars, about space, about animals, 315 00:25:08,298 --> 00:25:10,717 or about diving. 316 00:25:13,679 --> 00:25:16,807 [STEVENS] So, you had this sort of perfect, idyllic life 317 00:25:16,890 --> 00:25:18,516 with this man you loved. 318 00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:22,395 [EARLE] Jack Taylor and I got married in 1957. 319 00:25:22,478 --> 00:25:24,773 His first job was as a park ranger, 320 00:25:24,856 --> 00:25:28,526 and we moved from national park to national park. 321 00:25:28,610 --> 00:25:31,572 It was just a glorious couple of years. 322 00:25:31,655 --> 00:25:35,701 And he wanted to get his doctorate and I wanted to get mine. 323 00:25:35,784 --> 00:25:38,244 Then Elizabeth came along. [CHUCKLES] 324 00:25:38,328 --> 00:25:40,747 This is such ancient history. Good heavens. 325 00:25:40,831 --> 00:25:42,082 [LOUD RUMBLING] 326 00:25:50,591 --> 00:25:54,928 The '60s, the '70s in all of history 327 00:25:55,011 --> 00:25:59,182 really stands out as a time of exceptional discovery. 328 00:25:59,265 --> 00:26:02,227 [COUSTEAU] This is the first time an undersea boat 329 00:26:02,310 --> 00:26:05,146 has ever had an undersea base. 330 00:26:05,230 --> 00:26:09,651 [CAMERON] We were exploring the ocean aggressively for the first time, 331 00:26:09,735 --> 00:26:11,737 and we were trying to go to the moon. 332 00:26:11,820 --> 00:26:14,114 [MAN OVER RADIO] Roger, the EVA is progressing beautifully. 333 00:26:14,197 --> 00:26:16,282 [CAMERON] So it didn't matter which direction you were going. 334 00:26:16,366 --> 00:26:17,450 It was all great 335 00:26:17,533 --> 00:26:20,621 because either way you were going to a new and alien world. 336 00:26:23,581 --> 00:26:26,960 [EARLE] As a young scientist, this spirit of exploration was all around, 337 00:26:27,043 --> 00:26:29,129 and I wanted to be a part of it. 338 00:26:29,212 --> 00:26:30,588 And then came this opportunity 339 00:26:30,672 --> 00:26:34,592 to go on the International Indian Ocean Expedition in 1964. 340 00:26:34,676 --> 00:26:36,970 The other side of the world on a boat. 341 00:26:37,929 --> 00:26:40,766 But it'd mean being away from home for six weeks. 342 00:26:40,849 --> 00:26:45,603 And my children were four and two, Elizabeth and Richie. 343 00:26:45,687 --> 00:26:48,189 I had never been west of the Mississippi... 344 00:26:48,273 --> 00:26:51,067 never been out of the country before then. 345 00:26:51,151 --> 00:26:53,987 And then I really went out of the country. 346 00:26:56,990 --> 00:26:59,325 Met the boat in Mombasa. 347 00:27:00,243 --> 00:27:01,244 I was interviewed. 348 00:27:01,327 --> 00:27:05,248 It was my first real experience with the press. 349 00:27:07,167 --> 00:27:09,753 They wanted to know, "Why are you here?" 350 00:27:09,836 --> 00:27:14,800 And somebody let it be known that I was the only woman... and all these guys. 351 00:27:14,883 --> 00:27:18,594 And the headline the next day, Mombasa Daily Times... 352 00:27:19,637 --> 00:27:20,972 [EARLE READING] 353 00:27:25,060 --> 00:27:26,519 - [STEVENS] You did say seven-zero men? - Seven-zero. 354 00:27:26,602 --> 00:27:28,354 Oh, yeah. Big boat. 355 00:27:29,898 --> 00:27:32,901 [MALE ANCHOR] United States participation in the biological program 356 00:27:32,984 --> 00:27:36,237 began by converting the former presidential yacht, Williamsburg, 357 00:27:36,321 --> 00:27:37,989 to an oceanographic ship. 358 00:27:38,073 --> 00:27:44,204 [EARLE] The purpose of the expedition back in 1964 was... to explore. 359 00:27:44,287 --> 00:27:46,622 "To explore." What a concept. 360 00:27:49,751 --> 00:27:54,297 It was to document the nature of what lived in the ocean. 361 00:27:55,882 --> 00:27:58,301 No one had been to the Seychelles diving. 362 00:27:58,384 --> 00:28:01,972 No one had been to Aldabra diving before. 363 00:28:02,055 --> 00:28:06,059 No one had been to a little island called Fungu Kizimkazi. 364 00:28:06,142 --> 00:28:08,519 It was really amazing. 365 00:28:19,114 --> 00:28:20,115 I think the biggest discovery 366 00:28:20,198 --> 00:28:23,827 that we made in the International Indian Ocean Expedition... 367 00:28:24,745 --> 00:28:27,998 was the magnitude of how much we didn't know. 368 00:28:28,081 --> 00:28:31,626 [MALE ANCHOR] During this cruise, a total of 16,000 pounds of fish, 369 00:28:31,709 --> 00:28:36,547 200 pounds of shrimp, nearly a ton of swimming crabs were caught. 370 00:28:36,631 --> 00:28:40,051 [EARLE] The sea at the time... seemed... 371 00:28:40,135 --> 00:28:45,640 endless in its capacity to yield whatever we wanted to take from it. 372 00:28:45,724 --> 00:28:47,726 And whatever we wanted to put into it, it was okay. 373 00:28:47,809 --> 00:28:50,603 You'd dump things in the ocean, deep-six things. 374 00:28:50,686 --> 00:28:53,023 It was the way to get rid of something. 375 00:28:53,106 --> 00:28:57,778 It didn't clutter up our backyard, our land, so it went into the ocean. 376 00:28:57,861 --> 00:28:59,654 Our aquatic backyard. 377 00:29:17,005 --> 00:29:21,301 I have yet to take a dive, even in the deepest dive I've ever made, 378 00:29:21,384 --> 00:29:24,470 and not see tangible evidence of our presence... 379 00:29:26,681 --> 00:29:30,435 to see trash, junk on the bottom of the ocean, 380 00:29:30,518 --> 00:29:32,562 two and a half miles down. 381 00:29:37,192 --> 00:29:40,904 Things collect there and just continue to gather. 382 00:29:42,238 --> 00:29:47,493 So at the surface and even raining down to the great depths below... 383 00:29:47,577 --> 00:29:49,495 our signature is there. 384 00:29:56,502 --> 00:29:58,629 [STEVENS] It's not just dumping waste and garbage. 385 00:29:58,713 --> 00:30:01,757 [MAN ON RADIO] Three, two, one... 386 00:30:01,842 --> 00:30:02,968 [EXPLOSIONS] 387 00:30:06,972 --> 00:30:09,808 [STEVENS] Between 1950 and 1998, 388 00:30:09,891 --> 00:30:12,268 there have been more than a hundred nuclear test blasts. 389 00:30:16,314 --> 00:30:20,276 Either underwater or on remote islands in the middle of our oceans. 390 00:30:39,795 --> 00:30:42,048 [EARLE] 1964, when another opportunity came 391 00:30:42,132 --> 00:30:45,385 to go on the same ship, but in a different ocean, 392 00:30:45,468 --> 00:30:47,262 the southeastern Pacific, 393 00:30:48,179 --> 00:30:51,557 I... had to say yes. 394 00:30:52,517 --> 00:30:55,020 [STEVENS] What about the kids? Were you worried about them? 395 00:30:56,312 --> 00:30:59,399 [EARLE] Well, for me, life has always been a balancing act, if you will. 396 00:31:00,358 --> 00:31:03,569 But it was particularly true at that time. 397 00:31:06,281 --> 00:31:09,951 I think, for me, the stress was being apart from family, 398 00:31:10,035 --> 00:31:15,165 and of course as a mom with kids... but certainly with my husband as well. 399 00:31:15,248 --> 00:31:17,125 And maybe it was inevitable. 400 00:31:17,208 --> 00:31:19,544 We did come apart. 401 00:31:22,463 --> 00:31:24,799 [CAMERON] You don't think about it as, "Well, I'm gonna be an explorer." 402 00:31:24,883 --> 00:31:27,510 You just... You become curious and you start to follow a path. 403 00:31:27,593 --> 00:31:30,096 Then pretty soon that path is leading you away... 404 00:31:30,180 --> 00:31:32,515 from all the other well-trod paths. 405 00:31:34,767 --> 00:31:37,020 Then you start saying, "Why am I doing this? 406 00:31:37,103 --> 00:31:40,773 I'm risking every relationship I ever had." 407 00:31:40,856 --> 00:31:45,153 And then you start asking this question that has no logical answer to it... 408 00:31:45,236 --> 00:31:47,948 other than the fact that there's something deeply woven 409 00:31:48,031 --> 00:31:50,325 in the fiber of our being as human beings, 410 00:31:50,408 --> 00:31:53,536 that we just have to know what's over the hill, 411 00:31:53,619 --> 00:31:57,040 or around the corner or beyond the edge of the lights. 412 00:31:59,667 --> 00:32:02,795 [EARLE] 1964, I was in graduate school... 413 00:32:02,878 --> 00:32:06,091 and working on a dissertation. 414 00:32:06,174 --> 00:32:08,801 Gathering seaweeds from the Gulf of Mexico. 415 00:32:08,884 --> 00:32:10,220 I had a lab at home. 416 00:32:13,764 --> 00:32:18,394 I began assembling records of what kinds of plants live in the sea. 417 00:32:20,855 --> 00:32:25,485 I came to understand the beauty and the history and the importance 418 00:32:25,568 --> 00:32:29,114 of these marine seaweeds. 419 00:32:30,323 --> 00:32:33,451 And I haven't looked back. I mean, they are the anchor. 420 00:32:34,494 --> 00:32:35,828 [STEVENS] Can I ask you a question? 421 00:32:35,911 --> 00:32:37,998 When you say, "study seaweed," 422 00:32:38,081 --> 00:32:40,083 what does that mean, studying seaweed, exactly? 423 00:32:40,166 --> 00:32:41,209 [CHUCKLING] 424 00:32:41,292 --> 00:32:44,504 What does that mean? Like you pick up seaweed, you study it... 425 00:32:44,587 --> 00:32:46,922 [EARLE] Yeah, and it's like going to a place 426 00:32:47,007 --> 00:32:51,052 that no one has ever looked at what lives there before. 427 00:32:51,136 --> 00:32:53,346 So you're an explorer basically. 428 00:32:53,429 --> 00:32:55,473 You wanna find out who lives there, 429 00:32:55,556 --> 00:32:58,184 how many of what kind of creatures are there. 430 00:32:58,268 --> 00:32:59,519 Do they have names yet? 431 00:32:59,602 --> 00:33:03,648 And if not... let's find a name, let's make up a name. 432 00:33:11,114 --> 00:33:14,909 I spent years gathering seaweeds. 433 00:33:14,993 --> 00:33:19,414 Ultimately, I gave my plant collection to the Smithsonian. 434 00:33:24,835 --> 00:33:29,299 There are about 20,000 specimens of mine that have come to the Smithsonian. 435 00:33:29,382 --> 00:33:32,885 There's another big batch at the Farlow Herbarium in Harvard. 436 00:33:32,968 --> 00:33:38,808 This is one of my favorites. I did my dissertation on the brown algae. 437 00:33:38,891 --> 00:33:40,518 - [STEVENS] Brown algae. - Brown algae. 438 00:33:40,601 --> 00:33:44,230 This goes back to 1955. Were you born then? 439 00:33:44,314 --> 00:33:46,732 - [STEVENS] Uh, I was not born, thank you. - [EARLE LAUGHING] 440 00:33:46,816 --> 00:33:50,028 Here's another one. This is 1966. That's down in Sarasota. 441 00:33:50,111 --> 00:33:53,198 - This is the Gulf then. - This is Gulf of Mexico, right. 442 00:33:54,615 --> 00:33:55,616 Galapagos. 443 00:33:55,700 --> 00:33:59,870 Oh, I have so many amazing things from the Galapagos. 444 00:34:00,871 --> 00:34:03,333 Now this is... Ha! 445 00:34:03,416 --> 00:34:04,417 Oh, gosh. 446 00:34:05,376 --> 00:34:09,130 I'd like to go back and see if these things are still there. 447 00:34:12,300 --> 00:34:15,761 I first got to see the Galapagos Islands in 1966. 448 00:34:17,722 --> 00:34:21,851 I was one of 12 scientists on this big ship that enabled us to dive 449 00:34:21,934 --> 00:34:23,311 for the first time 450 00:34:23,394 --> 00:34:26,731 in places that no one had been to underwater before. 451 00:34:29,150 --> 00:34:33,071 It was an enchanted kingdom... underwater. 452 00:34:36,324 --> 00:34:39,327 It was the sharkiest place I'd ever seen. 453 00:34:39,410 --> 00:34:40,828 Look over the side, it looked like somebody had taken 454 00:34:40,911 --> 00:34:43,956 a box of those wooden matches and just dropped them on the bottom, 455 00:34:44,039 --> 00:34:47,001 and every match was a shark. 456 00:34:47,085 --> 00:34:50,671 You could dive down among them. Sharks just [IMITATING WHOOSHING] 457 00:34:50,755 --> 00:34:54,884 Like this, serenely going around you... 458 00:34:54,967 --> 00:34:57,303 not paying any attention to you. 459 00:35:00,306 --> 00:35:03,058 But at the time, people thought sharks were the enemy. 460 00:35:03,143 --> 00:35:05,436 The only good shark is a dead shark. 461 00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:07,980 [NARRATOR 1] Shark, tiger of the sea. 462 00:35:08,063 --> 00:35:11,151 Of all sea terrors, the shark is the meanest, the most crafty... 463 00:35:11,234 --> 00:35:13,068 [NARRATOR 2] Uh-oh. That flashing white belly, 464 00:35:13,153 --> 00:35:15,405 that's no tuna, that's a shark. 465 00:35:15,488 --> 00:35:19,325 Our rights to the fish are being disputed by those savages of the ocean, the shark. 466 00:35:22,828 --> 00:35:25,039 [EARLE] But, in fact, that wasn't the real problem. 467 00:35:25,123 --> 00:35:28,376 Sharks were never after humans. Man or woman. 468 00:35:29,252 --> 00:35:30,711 We're not on their menu. 469 00:35:33,464 --> 00:35:37,802 But in today's world, millions of us are taking bites out of sharks. 470 00:35:40,805 --> 00:35:44,642 [JACKSON] What's really tragic about it is they don't even bother to keep the shark. 471 00:35:44,725 --> 00:35:48,563 They just take the fins and throw the shark back in the water... 472 00:35:48,646 --> 00:35:51,106 essentially to die. 473 00:35:51,191 --> 00:35:54,026 It's tens of millions of shark fins 474 00:35:54,109 --> 00:35:55,945 that are harvested every year 475 00:35:56,862 --> 00:35:59,657 for soup, principally in China. 476 00:35:59,740 --> 00:36:04,787 It essentially created an enormous hole in the ecosystem 477 00:36:04,870 --> 00:36:06,581 and the way the ecosystem works. 478 00:36:08,874 --> 00:36:11,669 [STEVENS] Shark finning is one of the most barbaric examples 479 00:36:11,752 --> 00:36:13,379 of what we're doing to the ocean. 480 00:36:14,797 --> 00:36:18,509 But it's not just what's happening to the sharks that matter. 481 00:36:18,593 --> 00:36:21,095 The bottom of the ocean's food chain, 482 00:36:21,179 --> 00:36:24,640 plankton, as well as plants like algae and seaweed, 483 00:36:24,724 --> 00:36:27,977 generate more than half the oxygen we breathe. 484 00:36:28,060 --> 00:36:31,939 [EARLE] In the Galapagos Islands, there are some species that... 485 00:36:32,022 --> 00:36:33,524 that are missing. 486 00:36:33,608 --> 00:36:36,236 And there are new things that have come in that didn't exist before. 487 00:36:36,319 --> 00:36:38,321 If you don't have a record... 488 00:36:39,322 --> 00:36:40,990 you might speculate, you might guess... 489 00:36:41,073 --> 00:36:43,701 - Right. - ...but this is evidence. 490 00:36:43,784 --> 00:36:46,496 - This is hard evidence. - Beautiful evidence, too. 491 00:36:46,579 --> 00:36:48,998 [EARLE] Brings back such great memories. 492 00:36:51,376 --> 00:36:52,877 [STEVENS] What was your second husband's name? 493 00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:54,504 [EARLE] Giles Mead. 494 00:36:54,587 --> 00:36:55,963 [STEVENS] Okay, so how did you meet Giles? 495 00:36:56,046 --> 00:36:59,842 [EARLE] I met Giles Mead at a scientific meeting about fish. 496 00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:07,141 There is a society called the Association of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. 497 00:37:07,225 --> 00:37:09,810 [STEVENS] That's a little weird, Sylvia. [EARLE LAUGHING] I know. 498 00:37:09,894 --> 00:37:12,605 They have annual meetings 499 00:37:12,688 --> 00:37:17,777 and whoop it up and talk about fish and snakes and lizards and things. 500 00:37:20,363 --> 00:37:24,700 We met at this meeting and just began talking... 501 00:37:24,784 --> 00:37:26,744 and we continued talking... 502 00:37:26,827 --> 00:37:29,664 and we were still talking at 5:00 in the morning. 503 00:37:29,747 --> 00:37:34,209 And we agreed that we should continue the conversation. [LAUGHS] 504 00:37:38,130 --> 00:37:43,135 Got married in Harvard Chapel in December of '66. 505 00:37:45,555 --> 00:37:47,222 [STEVENS] Did he have kids, too? 506 00:37:47,307 --> 00:37:49,725 [EARLE] Yes, he actually had three children. 507 00:37:49,809 --> 00:37:54,980 And then, in 1968, my younger daughter, Gale, was born. 508 00:37:55,064 --> 00:37:58,150 So we had his and hers and ours. 509 00:37:58,233 --> 00:38:01,571 - [STEVENS] Wow. The Brady Bunch. - [LAUGHING] 510 00:38:03,072 --> 00:38:06,367 [MALE ANCHOR] The most ambitious project yet in ocean research 511 00:38:06,451 --> 00:38:10,455 has just started here in the sheltered bay of a beautiful West Indian island. 512 00:38:10,538 --> 00:38:14,959 Called Tektite II, it's the underwater base for a research project 513 00:38:15,042 --> 00:38:16,919 being run by a group of American universities 514 00:38:17,002 --> 00:38:19,964 with United States government backing. 515 00:38:22,633 --> 00:38:27,888 [EARLE] When I was at Harvard in 1969, I saw a notice on the bulletin board. 516 00:38:27,972 --> 00:38:32,393 "How would you like, as a scientist, to spend two weeks living underwater, 517 00:38:32,477 --> 00:38:37,106 down in the Virgin Islands?" That was... the pitch. 518 00:38:38,524 --> 00:38:42,194 I'd already been diving a lot, more than a thousand hours, 519 00:38:42,277 --> 00:38:45,656 published a number of things, and it didn't occur to me 520 00:38:45,740 --> 00:38:49,452 that women need not apply. 521 00:38:49,535 --> 00:38:54,999 And Jim Miller, head of the program, who had to finally make the call, said, 522 00:38:55,082 --> 00:38:58,628 "Well, half the fish are female, half the dolphins, half the whales. 523 00:38:58,711 --> 00:39:00,671 I guess we can put up with a few women." 524 00:39:07,553 --> 00:39:10,848 [MALE ANCHOR] Now a team of divers will attempt to live for two weeks 525 00:39:10,931 --> 00:39:13,768 as quiet residents on the sea floor. 526 00:39:15,353 --> 00:39:17,355 Ironically, these aquanauts 527 00:39:17,438 --> 00:39:22,276 are not men with extraordinary physical endurance and stamina, 528 00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,112 but five young and attractive women. 529 00:39:25,195 --> 00:39:28,323 The world's first real live mermaids. 530 00:39:29,409 --> 00:39:33,663 Their leader is a renowned scientist, Dr. Sylvia Earle, 531 00:39:33,746 --> 00:39:37,375 a marine botanist and an experienced diver. 532 00:39:49,303 --> 00:39:52,557 And so they settle down with all the comforts of home... 533 00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,977 TV, refrigerators, and wall-to-wall carpeting. 534 00:39:58,813 --> 00:40:00,147 [EARLE] You're warm and dry while you're inside, 535 00:40:00,230 --> 00:40:04,109 but you slip through a hole in the floor and you're in the water. 536 00:40:07,697 --> 00:40:10,115 And we could be in the water 10 to 12 hours a day. 537 00:40:12,577 --> 00:40:17,331 I felt like a kid in a candy store except that... everything was living. 538 00:40:21,001 --> 00:40:23,087 You're outside with the creatures 539 00:40:23,170 --> 00:40:24,880 and you just get to know them as individuals. 540 00:40:24,964 --> 00:40:28,843 You actually see this group of five angelfish 541 00:40:28,926 --> 00:40:30,886 that are always there first thing in the morning... 542 00:40:30,970 --> 00:40:33,639 and they have different attitudes, different personalities. 543 00:40:35,307 --> 00:40:38,769 That's, I think, what has given me 544 00:40:38,853 --> 00:40:42,147 a different perspective than most probably have. 545 00:40:42,231 --> 00:40:45,359 Not just about the ocean, but about the creatures who live there. 546 00:40:47,111 --> 00:40:48,946 I went into the Tektite project 547 00:40:49,029 --> 00:40:53,242 as an ivory tower scientist, not really in the public eye. 548 00:40:53,325 --> 00:40:56,245 But Tektite changed everything. 549 00:40:58,163 --> 00:41:00,040 I... [SIGHS] 550 00:41:01,792 --> 00:41:03,418 Had to get out of my shell. 551 00:41:07,465 --> 00:41:11,010 We had a parade down the streets of Chicago. 552 00:41:11,093 --> 00:41:13,804 Mayor Daley gave us the keys to the city. 553 00:41:14,889 --> 00:41:18,726 [MALE HOST] On To Tell The Truth, pick out the real Sylvia Earle. 554 00:41:18,809 --> 00:41:20,310 Sylvia Earle is number two. 555 00:41:21,604 --> 00:41:23,731 ♪ American woman ♪ 556 00:41:23,814 --> 00:41:26,817 ♪ Stay away from me ♪ 557 00:41:26,901 --> 00:41:28,528 ♪ American woman ♪ 558 00:41:28,611 --> 00:41:31,781 ♪ Listen what I say ♪ 559 00:41:31,864 --> 00:41:34,617 [JACKSON] Sylvia Earle was a pioneer... 560 00:41:34,700 --> 00:41:40,706 invading the flannel shirt, bearded oceanographer image. 561 00:41:43,125 --> 00:41:45,545 [CAMERON] There was a real sense that women simply couldn't do this. 562 00:41:45,628 --> 00:41:46,879 Well, they couldn't pick up the tanks! 563 00:41:46,962 --> 00:41:48,964 "You can't pick up that equipment. 564 00:41:49,048 --> 00:41:51,133 Here, let me help you with your gear, little lady." 565 00:41:55,054 --> 00:41:58,808 She really broke through the barriers. 566 00:42:00,810 --> 00:42:06,607 And for that, every woman scientist, for example, should be very grateful. 567 00:42:10,194 --> 00:42:12,655 [MALE ANCHOR] Months later in California, 568 00:42:12,738 --> 00:42:16,366 Tektite II, the Virgin Islands and Greater Lameshur Bay 569 00:42:16,450 --> 00:42:19,579 are just memories as Dr. Earle, wife and mother, 570 00:42:19,662 --> 00:42:23,666 plays with her daughter Elizabeth, 10, and her son Richie, 8. 571 00:42:24,917 --> 00:42:27,753 For Dr. Earle and her husband, Dr. Giles Mead, 572 00:42:27,837 --> 00:42:30,965 Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, 573 00:42:31,048 --> 00:42:33,801 Tektite II is a significant milestone in reaching... 574 00:42:33,884 --> 00:42:37,096 [STEVENS] So you became sort of famous after this. 575 00:42:37,179 --> 00:42:40,390 I mean, you became a bit of a public face for science. 576 00:42:40,474 --> 00:42:43,936 And it was also great 'cause you were not only smart, 577 00:42:44,019 --> 00:42:46,856 but you were beautiful and you made that okay. 578 00:42:46,939 --> 00:42:49,316 Well, never occurred to me that it wasn't okay. 579 00:42:51,193 --> 00:42:55,405 What was tricky, let's say, difficult, if anything, 580 00:42:55,489 --> 00:42:59,994 was... trying to be a good mom, trying to be a good wife, 581 00:43:00,077 --> 00:43:04,790 trying to be good Mrs. Museum, Mrs. Giles Mead, 582 00:43:04,874 --> 00:43:07,752 trying to be presentable at black tie parties, 583 00:43:07,835 --> 00:43:12,006 trying to be good hostess, trying to be good scientist. 584 00:43:12,089 --> 00:43:15,676 It was... it was a tricky time. 585 00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:18,428 But, I mean, it's life. It's life. 586 00:43:19,847 --> 00:43:24,309 [STEVENS] And so... so you're in LA, and how did it end with Giles? 587 00:43:24,393 --> 00:43:27,855 [EARLE] Expedition to the Comoro Islands in 1975. 588 00:43:28,814 --> 00:43:30,274 A team was put together, 589 00:43:30,357 --> 00:43:33,443 and Giles and I were to be a part of this team. 590 00:43:34,403 --> 00:43:37,114 We had our tickets, the bags were packed... 591 00:43:37,197 --> 00:43:42,452 and he said something had come up, that he would meet me there, "Go ahead." 592 00:43:43,996 --> 00:43:45,831 Time for his plane to arrive... 593 00:43:45,915 --> 00:43:48,793 and the plane arrived, but he wasn't on it. 594 00:43:50,544 --> 00:43:55,174 I figured, "Well, he must've been delayed somehow." 595 00:43:55,257 --> 00:43:59,679 And... he was delayed. He didn't come at all. 596 00:44:01,513 --> 00:44:07,519 [JACKSON] Being married to... a very famous scientist, 597 00:44:07,602 --> 00:44:09,980 who never understood the glass ceiling 598 00:44:10,064 --> 00:44:14,694 until, all of a sudden, she was better than everybody where she worked. 599 00:44:14,777 --> 00:44:16,486 That's really hard, you know? 600 00:44:18,613 --> 00:44:22,284 [EARLE] I felt the pain from time to time. 601 00:44:22,367 --> 00:44:27,289 Wanting to do things that were tough for me to do as a woman... 602 00:44:27,372 --> 00:44:30,250 because I was a woman, and not because I was a scientist. 603 00:44:32,544 --> 00:44:36,590 You can think of a thousand excuses why you can't do something. 604 00:44:36,674 --> 00:44:41,303 The trick is... to not let that get in the way of making things happen. 605 00:44:44,556 --> 00:44:47,059 [LIZ TAYLOR] Numerous people have told me that she's no June Cleaver. 606 00:44:47,142 --> 00:44:49,019 Yeah, she's not sort of the typical mom. 607 00:44:49,103 --> 00:44:50,520 You don't really expect that 608 00:44:50,604 --> 00:44:53,899 your mom's gonna come home with a five-gallon bucket of algae 609 00:44:53,983 --> 00:44:57,069 and recruit you out into the garage to start laying it out 610 00:44:57,152 --> 00:44:59,947 and show you the right way to label it and, you know, these sorts of things. 611 00:45:00,030 --> 00:45:02,116 Those aren't typical, so, you know... 612 00:45:02,199 --> 00:45:03,450 But it's what we always did. 613 00:45:06,245 --> 00:45:09,706 As a kid, we were constantly being yanked out of school mid-semester, 614 00:45:09,790 --> 00:45:11,500 and we'd travel with her kind of all over the place, 615 00:45:11,583 --> 00:45:14,169 wherever she would happen to go. 616 00:45:14,253 --> 00:45:17,422 We were able to get a broader education that way, 617 00:45:17,506 --> 00:45:21,468 even though it wasn't as traditional as... as most. 618 00:46:01,466 --> 00:46:05,888 [EARLE] When I came to the Caribbean as part of the Tektite mission in 1970, 619 00:46:05,971 --> 00:46:09,099 the reefs here were full of life. 620 00:46:10,767 --> 00:46:14,688 Today... those reefs are gone. 621 00:46:22,612 --> 00:46:26,491 It's happening all over the world. 622 00:46:26,575 --> 00:46:29,786 About half the corals are gone, globally, 623 00:46:29,870 --> 00:46:33,498 from where they were just a few decades ago. 624 00:46:35,250 --> 00:46:37,627 The ocean is dying. 625 00:46:49,639 --> 00:46:51,725 [STEPHEN COLBERT] You're saying that the oceans are in crisis. 626 00:46:51,808 --> 00:46:52,809 [EARLE] Yes. 627 00:46:52,893 --> 00:46:55,604 How so? What's... If they're so big, if they're so huge... 628 00:46:55,687 --> 00:46:57,606 'Cause they're the biggest thing on Earth, right? The oceans? 629 00:46:57,689 --> 00:46:59,399 We used to think there's nothing that we could do 630 00:46:59,483 --> 00:47:00,484 that could harm the ocean. 631 00:47:00,567 --> 00:47:01,651 And we tried, right? 632 00:47:01,735 --> 00:47:03,195 - We tried pretty hard to harm the ocean. - [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] 633 00:47:03,278 --> 00:47:06,531 And it was frustrating us, so we upped the ante a little bit. 634 00:47:12,579 --> 00:47:16,250 [JACKSON] There needs to be a real rethinking. 635 00:47:16,333 --> 00:47:18,585 Unless we just decide that 636 00:47:18,668 --> 00:47:23,173 nature is gonna be a museum in a few small places... 637 00:47:23,257 --> 00:47:26,886 what we really have to address is the problem of us. 638 00:47:29,138 --> 00:47:31,891 [SAFINA] The biggest threat is there are far too many people 639 00:47:31,974 --> 00:47:34,101 and our appetites are out of control. 640 00:47:35,185 --> 00:47:36,728 Not just our appetites for food, 641 00:47:36,811 --> 00:47:40,107 our appetite for wood, our appetites for fossil fuels. 642 00:47:42,359 --> 00:47:47,656 [EARLE] The biggest problem is releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 643 00:47:47,739 --> 00:47:51,785 that drives these great climate change events. 644 00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:56,916 Starting in 1980, we began to actually measure 645 00:47:56,999 --> 00:48:02,796 the amount of ice deliberately correlated with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. 646 00:48:02,879 --> 00:48:06,008 It tracks. It tracks like this. 647 00:48:07,009 --> 00:48:13,140 The warming trends, CO2 in the atmosphere, the melting in polar ice. 648 00:48:15,267 --> 00:48:16,518 [CAMERON] There's this cognitive link 649 00:48:16,601 --> 00:48:22,066 that people just aren't making about the role of ocean in climate. 650 00:48:22,149 --> 00:48:25,986 They don't understand the ocean is this great regulator of temperature, 651 00:48:26,070 --> 00:48:29,990 of the movement of heat around the planet. 652 00:48:30,074 --> 00:48:33,535 [EARLE] What we're doing to the ocean, what we're doing to the planet as a whole, 653 00:48:33,618 --> 00:48:35,495 comes back to us in bigger storms, 654 00:48:35,579 --> 00:48:38,832 more powerful storms, more frequent storms. 655 00:48:40,167 --> 00:48:42,419 Nobody wants that to happen. 656 00:48:42,502 --> 00:48:45,505 And if we don't want that to happen... 657 00:48:45,589 --> 00:48:51,178 we will make the connection between what we're doing to the living ocean 658 00:48:51,261 --> 00:48:56,225 and how that affects the predictability... of our future. 659 00:49:00,020 --> 00:49:02,731 [STEVENS] Our relentless pursuit for oil and gas, 660 00:49:02,814 --> 00:49:06,901 for energy, continues to wreak havoc on our oceans. 661 00:49:06,986 --> 00:49:10,072 But ironically, it's these same industries 662 00:49:10,155 --> 00:49:13,283 that have led to breakthroughs in underwater exploration. 663 00:49:19,081 --> 00:49:21,791 [MALE ANCHOR] There is a new tool in the sea. 664 00:49:21,875 --> 00:49:25,920 It moves with the ponderous rhythms of a mechanical monster. 665 00:49:26,005 --> 00:49:29,008 But actually, it is a new vehicle... 666 00:49:29,091 --> 00:49:31,426 a personal submersible. 667 00:49:31,510 --> 00:49:35,222 It can withstand water pressure to 2,000 feet. 668 00:49:35,305 --> 00:49:39,101 Normally, a diver making a six-hour dive to that depth 669 00:49:39,184 --> 00:49:41,520 would spend 20 days in decompression. 670 00:49:41,603 --> 00:49:46,066 A diver using JIM for six hours at 2,000 feet 671 00:49:46,150 --> 00:49:50,320 can surface, open the hatch and walk away. 672 00:49:54,283 --> 00:49:57,369 But now a new use for the JIM suit is to be tested. 673 00:50:00,289 --> 00:50:03,167 Dr. Sylvia Earle is a marine biologist. 674 00:50:03,250 --> 00:50:04,293 [EARLE] Great. 675 00:50:04,376 --> 00:50:05,585 [MALE ANCHOR] Her question... 676 00:50:05,669 --> 00:50:10,507 "Can scientists use the JIM suit for dives beyond 1,000 feet?" 677 00:50:10,590 --> 00:50:12,008 If successful... 678 00:50:12,092 --> 00:50:16,763 she will be the first woman to walk the sea floor beyond 1,000 feet. 679 00:50:19,808 --> 00:50:23,437 [MIKE DEGRUY] I've known Sylvia probably 30-some-odd years. 680 00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:27,066 I think I first met Sylvia in Hawaii when she was diving in the JIM suit. 681 00:50:28,024 --> 00:50:30,485 I was working with Maui divers at the time, 682 00:50:30,569 --> 00:50:34,073 and so I just kind of hung around and helped out where I could. 683 00:50:34,156 --> 00:50:35,407 [MAN] Ready? [EARLE] Yes. 684 00:50:35,490 --> 00:50:37,409 [MAN] Let me close you up. 685 00:50:37,492 --> 00:50:40,370 [DEGRUY] The JIM suit was mounted on the front of a little sub, 686 00:50:40,454 --> 00:50:44,749 and the idea was that the sub and Sylvia would descend together, 687 00:50:44,833 --> 00:50:47,127 with the sub being the safety mechanism 688 00:50:47,211 --> 00:50:50,755 in case something went wrong with Sylvia in the JIM suit. 689 00:50:51,756 --> 00:50:54,093 [MAN 1 OVER RADIO] Holokai, Holokai. We're neutrally buoyant. 690 00:50:54,176 --> 00:50:58,347 Sylvia is secured and the divers are backing us off the LRT. 691 00:50:59,306 --> 00:51:02,726 [MAN 2 OVER RADIO] We are at 100 feet and going down. 692 00:51:04,228 --> 00:51:06,938 - [MAN 1] All systems go. - [FEEDBACK] 693 00:51:07,021 --> 00:51:08,064 [EARLE OVER RADIO] Roger that. 694 00:51:08,148 --> 00:51:11,318 [MAN 1] Coming up on 1,150, Sylvia. How's your systems? 695 00:51:12,486 --> 00:51:14,946 [EARLE] Systems fine. I'll give you a check. 696 00:51:17,741 --> 00:51:20,869 I see it! Oh! It's the bottom! 697 00:51:27,626 --> 00:51:29,419 [CAMERON] It's that thing that explorers love to do, 698 00:51:29,503 --> 00:51:33,840 which is to just get as far away from humanity as they can. 699 00:51:33,923 --> 00:51:34,966 In a way, ironically, 700 00:51:35,049 --> 00:51:38,303 it puts you more in touch with your own humanity. 701 00:51:38,387 --> 00:51:39,596 Looking at a landscape 702 00:51:39,679 --> 00:51:43,225 that hasn't changed in billions of years... 703 00:51:45,394 --> 00:51:48,522 you just feel the sense that your lights only go so far, 704 00:51:48,605 --> 00:51:50,649 everything out beyond the lights is unexplored, 705 00:51:50,732 --> 00:51:51,858 it's still unobserved. 706 00:51:51,941 --> 00:51:56,112 So there's this almost egoless sense of... of humility 707 00:51:56,196 --> 00:51:59,866 before the vastness of the unknown. 708 00:52:02,161 --> 00:52:05,330 [EARLE] I had this great opportunity for two-and-a-half hours 709 00:52:05,414 --> 00:52:10,960 to walk around and explore the ocean 1,250 feet down. 710 00:52:12,379 --> 00:52:17,091 I asked them to turn off the lights so we could have a completely dark ocean. 711 00:52:22,514 --> 00:52:25,850 Except it wasn't completely dark. 712 00:52:32,357 --> 00:52:34,108 It was amazing. 713 00:52:34,193 --> 00:52:36,320 The astronauts on the moon, the first time, 714 00:52:36,403 --> 00:52:38,697 they could just look at each other. 715 00:52:38,780 --> 00:52:41,115 I was surrounded by creatures. 716 00:52:43,243 --> 00:52:46,496 Fish swimming by with little lights down the side. 717 00:52:47,456 --> 00:52:51,210 And there were thousands of sparkles and flashes everywhere. 718 00:52:59,133 --> 00:53:01,970 It was... I mean, I was... just like a little kid. 719 00:53:02,053 --> 00:53:03,263 [EARLE CHUCKLES] 720 00:53:13,982 --> 00:53:16,235 [STEVENS] And that must have been... Was that scary? 721 00:53:16,318 --> 00:53:17,569 No. 722 00:53:17,652 --> 00:53:20,572 The scary part is always getting on the highway... [CHUCKLES] 723 00:53:20,655 --> 00:53:22,282 ...to drive to your submarine. 724 00:53:28,079 --> 00:53:31,458 We say we want to go to the moon, and 10 years later, we're on the moon. 725 00:53:31,541 --> 00:53:33,126 Why can't we say now, 726 00:53:33,209 --> 00:53:36,045 "I wanna walk around at 37,800 feet, 727 00:53:36,129 --> 00:53:38,673 the bottom of the ocean, seven miles down"? 728 00:53:38,757 --> 00:53:39,966 And, "Let's do it." 729 00:53:41,801 --> 00:53:43,345 The JIM suit really fired in me... 730 00:53:43,428 --> 00:53:46,265 the desire to do something to make it easier, 731 00:53:46,348 --> 00:53:51,978 not just for me, but for everyone, to gain access to the sea 732 00:53:52,061 --> 00:53:56,858 because only 5% of the ocean, even today, has been seen. 733 00:53:56,941 --> 00:53:58,985 Let alone mapped and explored. 734 00:54:01,488 --> 00:54:06,618 And I began talking with an engineer who was associated with that project... 735 00:54:06,701 --> 00:54:10,830 and we got into a lively discussion about those claws on the JIM suit 736 00:54:10,914 --> 00:54:13,124 and I didn't realize he had actually designed them. 737 00:54:13,207 --> 00:54:14,959 I was so critical. 738 00:54:15,043 --> 00:54:16,420 I insulted him. 739 00:54:16,503 --> 00:54:18,087 "Oh, I thought I had a good manipulator 740 00:54:18,171 --> 00:54:20,299 and she says it's a stupid piece of machinery." 741 00:54:21,716 --> 00:54:24,511 And he went back to England where he lived, 742 00:54:24,594 --> 00:54:27,639 and what he came back with was absolutely magnificent. 743 00:54:27,722 --> 00:54:33,978 His name... Graham Hawkes, written... with such dexterity and finesse 744 00:54:34,062 --> 00:54:37,273 that he could have used the manipulator arm 745 00:54:37,357 --> 00:54:39,818 to sign a check that would've cleared the bank. 746 00:54:39,901 --> 00:54:42,278 I was... I was hooked. 747 00:54:42,362 --> 00:54:45,990 [MALE ANCHOR] It was on this project that she met her husband, Graham Hawkes. 748 00:54:46,950 --> 00:54:50,454 He is an engineer and inventor who defected from the aerospace field 749 00:54:50,537 --> 00:54:55,834 when he realized that the last frontier was not space... but the deep ocean. 750 00:54:55,917 --> 00:54:59,087 What I remember was Sylvia saying, 751 00:55:00,339 --> 00:55:02,674 "Why can't we go to the bottom of the ocean?" 752 00:55:03,633 --> 00:55:08,262 I'd spent, I think, five years getting from 1,500 feet to 2,000 feet, 753 00:55:08,347 --> 00:55:11,600 and here is Sylvia saying, "I wanna go to 37,000 feet." 754 00:55:11,683 --> 00:55:14,102 [EARLE] When Graham Hawkes and I first began collaborating, 755 00:55:14,185 --> 00:55:16,605 we wanted to go to the deepest sea. 756 00:55:16,688 --> 00:55:18,064 Well, I wanted to go anyway. 757 00:55:18,147 --> 00:55:20,359 And then, I'm thinking... 758 00:55:20,442 --> 00:55:23,362 "Lady, I can tell you all the reasons why we can't do it." 759 00:55:23,445 --> 00:55:27,240 And in the end, I knocked those reasons down in my mind, 760 00:55:27,323 --> 00:55:30,827 and I kind of thought maybe we could. 761 00:55:30,910 --> 00:55:33,788 So Sylvia inspired me. 762 00:55:33,872 --> 00:55:35,457 That was the way that worked. 763 00:55:52,348 --> 00:55:53,600 [EARLE] One thing led to another, 764 00:55:53,683 --> 00:55:57,061 and a system called the Deep Rover was born. 765 00:55:58,146 --> 00:55:59,773 And it's a beautiful system 766 00:55:59,856 --> 00:56:04,068 that I've had the joy of taking to full 1,000 meters, 767 00:56:04,152 --> 00:56:07,614 its full rated depth... and a little bit more. 768 00:56:09,949 --> 00:56:13,077 And until James Cameron came along with his system 769 00:56:13,161 --> 00:56:18,166 that went all the way booming down to seven miles, 11 kilometers, 770 00:56:18,249 --> 00:56:23,254 we had the deepest solo dives that anyone had achieved. 771 00:56:23,337 --> 00:56:25,757 [STEVENS] You and Graham didn't have any children, did you? 772 00:56:25,840 --> 00:56:27,426 We had submarines. 773 00:56:29,135 --> 00:56:31,387 Ten years later, parted ways... 774 00:56:31,471 --> 00:56:34,724 but our interest in actually accessing the sea 775 00:56:34,808 --> 00:56:36,518 and developing new technologies... 776 00:56:37,477 --> 00:56:40,396 I mean, it burned brightly in both of us. 777 00:56:43,066 --> 00:56:46,486 [STEVENS] Sylvia started designing her own submarines. 778 00:56:46,570 --> 00:56:48,029 A company she founded 779 00:56:48,112 --> 00:56:51,533 designed the manipulator arm that was on the Deepsea Challenger, 780 00:56:52,534 --> 00:56:57,121 the sub that James Cameron used for his record-setting dive. 781 00:56:58,247 --> 00:57:01,417 Are you a little disappointed that Jim didn't take you with him? 782 00:57:01,501 --> 00:57:03,336 [EARLE] Of course I wanted to go... 783 00:57:03,419 --> 00:57:06,756 but, alas, it's a one-person system. [LAUGHING] 784 00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:08,717 The arm is right here. Here's your arm. 785 00:57:09,718 --> 00:57:12,721 I love the fact that we have better lights than... 786 00:57:12,804 --> 00:57:14,222 [CAMERON] Sylvia was ready to volunteer. 787 00:57:14,305 --> 00:57:16,224 She said, "Fine, put me through pilot training." 788 00:57:16,307 --> 00:57:18,768 And the thing is, she's... you know... she's not but this high. 789 00:57:18,852 --> 00:57:22,564 So she's actually a better... a better deep aquanaut than I am. 790 00:57:22,647 --> 00:57:26,443 You know, she's more physically adapted, and she pointed that out frequently. 791 00:57:26,526 --> 00:57:30,739 "You know, I would be better in that sub than you." [LAUGHS] 792 00:57:30,822 --> 00:57:33,074 Tonight, I'd like to introduce you to someone 793 00:57:33,157 --> 00:57:35,994 who is way up at the top of my most admired list. 794 00:57:36,077 --> 00:57:38,246 She is Dr. Sylvia Earle. 795 00:57:38,329 --> 00:57:42,667 In 1990, Sylvia Earle received a presidential appointment 796 00:57:42,751 --> 00:57:45,336 that, for her, was the culmination of a life's work. 797 00:57:45,419 --> 00:57:48,548 She became the chief scientist for NOAA, 798 00:57:48,632 --> 00:57:51,843 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 799 00:57:51,926 --> 00:57:56,389 NOAA oversees the nation's coastal waters and fisheries. 800 00:57:56,473 --> 00:58:00,810 [EARLE] I loved the opportunity to be at NOAA as the chief scientist. 801 00:58:00,894 --> 00:58:02,228 I learned things there 802 00:58:02,311 --> 00:58:07,150 that I... that I couldn't know... from being a private citizen. 803 00:58:08,109 --> 00:58:10,529 I had a chance to see things 804 00:58:10,612 --> 00:58:14,866 that have changed my perception... of what's actually going on. 805 00:58:14,949 --> 00:58:16,576 - [GUNFIRE] - [EXPLOSIONS] 806 00:58:21,414 --> 00:58:25,043 I was right in the thick of the big Persian Gulf oil spill. 807 00:58:26,419 --> 00:58:29,255 I went over to the Persian Gulf on nine different occasions 808 00:58:29,338 --> 00:58:31,174 to try to make recommendations. 809 00:58:32,759 --> 00:58:35,344 [FEMALE ANCHOR] Sylvia Earle is just back from assessing 810 00:58:35,428 --> 00:58:37,764 the environmental damage from the Gulf War. 811 00:58:37,847 --> 00:58:42,268 The environment really was shattered, air, land and sea. Of course, the... 812 00:58:42,351 --> 00:58:44,103 [JACKSON] You know, it's very rare 813 00:58:44,187 --> 00:58:46,940 that you would have someone who is a great scientist 814 00:58:47,023 --> 00:58:48,066 who would also be... 815 00:58:48,149 --> 00:58:52,486 a successful administrator of an organization like that 816 00:58:52,571 --> 00:58:57,033 because you need to be able to kick political ass, have influence, 817 00:58:57,116 --> 00:59:01,162 and control the unruly bureaucracy of people 818 00:59:01,245 --> 00:59:04,082 who come from God only knows how many administrations, 819 00:59:04,165 --> 00:59:07,794 who think they know the truth, and they're gonna outlast you. 820 00:59:07,877 --> 00:59:11,172 And so they're just gonna stonewall. 821 00:59:11,255 --> 00:59:14,133 [EARLE] I went to one meeting of the fisheries council 822 00:59:14,217 --> 00:59:17,345 and... and I was never allowed to go again. [LAUGHING] 823 00:59:18,722 --> 00:59:22,809 A document came across my desk saying that in 20 years 824 00:59:22,892 --> 00:59:25,604 bluefin tuna populations in the North Atlantic 825 00:59:25,687 --> 00:59:28,106 had declined by 90%. 826 00:59:29,190 --> 00:59:31,860 I found that shocking. 827 00:59:31,943 --> 00:59:35,614 And so, when I went to this fisheries meeting 828 00:59:35,697 --> 00:59:36,823 [CHUCKLING] as Chief Scientist, 829 00:59:36,906 --> 00:59:39,533 I raised the issue. What are we doing to the tuna? 830 00:59:40,827 --> 00:59:43,287 Because if we're trying to exterminate them, 831 00:59:43,371 --> 00:59:44,956 we're doing a great job. 832 00:59:45,039 --> 00:59:46,916 We have to stop killing them. 833 00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:48,752 Well, that wasn't a popular view. 834 00:59:48,835 --> 00:59:51,630 That's when they started calling me The Sturgeon General. 835 00:59:52,589 --> 00:59:56,550 I wasn't really permitted to speak about the things that I knew the most about. 836 00:59:57,510 --> 01:00:01,555 I feel that I must resign, and as a private citizen, 837 01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:06,102 do what I can do with more flexibility, more freedom. 838 01:00:07,561 --> 01:00:13,860 Well... Much as I value the experience... it was stifling. 839 01:00:14,819 --> 01:00:19,741 I never deliberately said anything as Chief Scientist that I didn't believe, 840 01:00:19,824 --> 01:00:24,996 but I was asked not to speak on occasions because they knew what I would say. 841 01:00:26,289 --> 01:00:30,627 On the outside, you're free to go to places 842 01:00:30,710 --> 01:00:35,965 that I couldn't go... as a government official. 843 01:00:36,049 --> 01:00:38,760 I can be free to speak my mind. 844 01:00:47,393 --> 01:00:50,897 Not long after I left NOAA, I was in the Tokyo fish market. 845 01:00:50,980 --> 01:00:53,107 There's no place on the planet 846 01:00:53,191 --> 01:00:56,903 where more fish are brought from more places in the world 847 01:00:56,986 --> 01:00:58,529 than in Tokyo. 848 01:00:59,989 --> 01:01:05,036 Tons and tons of ocean wildlife extracted and consumed 849 01:01:05,119 --> 01:01:10,083 just... year after year after year after year. 850 01:01:11,084 --> 01:01:14,170 It's hard to imagine that the ocean can continue. 851 01:01:25,514 --> 01:01:30,394 And then I saw rows and rows and rows... of tuna. 852 01:01:30,478 --> 01:01:32,981 There must be a thousand fish here or more. 853 01:01:33,064 --> 01:01:35,274 [MAN] Giant bluefin. [EARLE] Yeah. 854 01:01:36,192 --> 01:01:37,443 [EARLE] Oh... 855 01:01:41,823 --> 01:01:45,034 Many of the tuna I saw back then were just babies. 856 01:01:45,118 --> 01:01:49,205 They hadn't even reached a point where they could start to reproduce. 857 01:01:49,288 --> 01:01:50,832 And that was in the 1990s. 858 01:01:50,915 --> 01:01:52,959 It's gotten so much worse. 859 01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:55,712 If you go to Tsukiji today... 860 01:01:55,795 --> 01:01:58,923 the bluefin tuna being bought for restaurants all over the world 861 01:01:59,007 --> 01:02:01,801 are even smaller and younger. 862 01:02:01,885 --> 01:02:05,679 We're fishing them to the very edge of extinction. 863 01:02:24,783 --> 01:02:27,201 [COLBERT] But I don't have to stop eating fish, do I? 864 01:02:27,285 --> 01:02:28,452 Well, I have. [LAUGHING] 865 01:02:28,536 --> 01:02:30,246 - You've stopped eating fish? - I have, because... 866 01:02:30,329 --> 01:02:31,790 'Cause you've been down there under the ocean 867 01:02:31,873 --> 01:02:34,583 and you've seen them do the dirty business, and you... 868 01:02:34,667 --> 01:02:36,878 - I know too much. - That probably turns your stomach on it. 869 01:02:36,961 --> 01:02:38,462 But... I... 870 01:02:38,546 --> 01:02:41,715 We eat a lot of fish. Fish is supposed to be the healthy food. 871 01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:42,926 - That's the... - I mean, how else am I supposed to 872 01:02:43,009 --> 01:02:44,385 - get my mercury? - [ALL LAUGHING] 873 01:02:45,303 --> 01:02:48,014 If we... if we went off of the major fish that we eat in the oceans, 874 01:02:48,097 --> 01:02:50,141 what... what should we eat? I mean, should we be eating... 875 01:02:50,224 --> 01:02:51,517 We can't eat the cows, right? 876 01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:54,103 We can't eat the pigs 'cause those industrial farms hurt us, too. 877 01:02:54,187 --> 01:02:57,398 What's left? Invertebrates? You know? 878 01:02:57,481 --> 01:03:00,651 We're gonna have to give them a new name just to make us eat them, you know? 879 01:03:00,734 --> 01:03:05,156 The way we called Patagonian toothfish Chilean sea bass to get us to eat that. 880 01:03:05,239 --> 01:03:09,118 Orange roughy, the... what scientists call them, "slimeheads." 881 01:03:09,202 --> 01:03:10,203 - Slimeheads? - Mmm-hmm. 882 01:03:10,286 --> 01:03:11,871 So we changed the name to "orange roughy" 883 01:03:11,955 --> 01:03:13,206 - and then we started eating them? - That's right. 884 01:03:13,289 --> 01:03:14,415 Why don't we start calling... 885 01:03:14,498 --> 01:03:18,377 why don't we start calling earthworms Appalachian yard trout? 886 01:03:18,461 --> 01:03:19,545 [ALL LAUGHING] 887 01:03:19,628 --> 01:03:21,047 - And then we'll just... - I like it. I like it a lot. 888 01:03:21,130 --> 01:03:22,924 ...we'll start eating those and it'll be all fine. 889 01:03:23,842 --> 01:03:27,929 [MALE ANCHOR] Fishing is one of the more important occupations along the coast. 890 01:03:28,012 --> 01:03:30,431 Strangely enough... the most important catch 891 01:03:30,514 --> 01:03:35,979 is not primarily a food fish... but the fabulous menhaden. 892 01:03:36,062 --> 01:03:38,689 An important marine industry has been developed 893 01:03:38,772 --> 01:03:41,943 based on the valuable oil extracted from the menhaden. 894 01:03:42,026 --> 01:03:45,321 [JACKSON] Most people have never heard of menhaden. 895 01:03:45,404 --> 01:03:49,158 Menhaden used to be unbelievably abundant 896 01:03:49,242 --> 01:03:51,953 to the point that you just couldn't see through 897 01:03:52,036 --> 01:03:55,206 the schools of billions of fish. 898 01:03:56,790 --> 01:03:58,042 And now these guys come in 899 01:03:58,126 --> 01:04:03,172 and they suck up with their vacuum cleaner vast amounts of menhaden. 900 01:04:03,256 --> 01:04:05,466 For what? For chicken feed. 901 01:04:05,549 --> 01:04:09,678 So that we can eat chicken that tastes like fish. 902 01:04:11,931 --> 01:04:14,392 [EARLE] We're so good at killing menhaden, 903 01:04:14,475 --> 01:04:18,021 so good at turning them into fishmeal and fish oil. 904 01:04:18,104 --> 01:04:20,481 [STEVENS] My doctor tells me, "Take Omega-3 pills. 905 01:04:20,564 --> 01:04:21,732 They're very good for you." 906 01:04:21,815 --> 01:04:23,567 So what do I do? 907 01:04:23,651 --> 01:04:27,947 [EARLE] We don't have to kill fish to get the omega oils 908 01:04:28,031 --> 01:04:30,491 that we really value and that are good for us. 909 01:04:30,574 --> 01:04:34,120 We can get them from the plants that the fish eat. 910 01:04:34,203 --> 01:04:36,664 Fish don't make those oils anyway. 911 01:04:44,297 --> 01:04:48,676 [JACKSON] You know, menhaden are really quite extraordinary fish. 912 01:04:50,970 --> 01:04:55,683 What they in fact act as is the... the kidneys of the ocean. 913 01:04:55,766 --> 01:05:00,479 They're cleaning up the water of excess phytoplankton and detritus. 914 01:05:02,856 --> 01:05:04,442 And then on top of that, 915 01:05:04,525 --> 01:05:09,405 they are the base of the food chain for bluefish and striped bass 916 01:05:09,488 --> 01:05:14,702 and all of these fish that are incredibly valuable, incredibly tasty. 917 01:05:15,828 --> 01:05:21,375 And as menhaden have disappeared, so have these very valuable fish. 918 01:05:23,794 --> 01:05:26,047 Once the menhaden are gone, 919 01:05:26,130 --> 01:05:31,594 the Chesapeake Bay will not be the same intact ecosystem. 920 01:05:49,112 --> 01:05:53,407 [STEVENS] This is the face of industrial fishing in the Chesapeake Bay. 921 01:05:53,491 --> 01:05:58,246 Fleets of boats, spotter planes, and huge nets 922 01:05:58,329 --> 01:06:03,334 that capture entire schools of fish in a matter of minutes. 923 01:06:14,137 --> 01:06:15,429 [MAN 1] Get 'em in there! 924 01:06:15,513 --> 01:06:17,265 [MAN 2] Get in there! All the way in there! 925 01:06:17,348 --> 01:06:19,850 [MAN 1] You guys come on this side! [MAN 2] Let's get... let's get in there. 926 01:06:19,933 --> 01:06:24,355 [MAN 3] Back away! It's dangerous! Go away! Get out of there! 927 01:06:24,438 --> 01:06:27,066 [WOMAN] Here we go. [STEVENS] Got it? 928 01:06:27,150 --> 01:06:31,820 [EARLE] I've looked at any number of charts, graphs... numbers on a page. 929 01:06:34,782 --> 01:06:39,578 I've seen lots of photographs of industrial fishing operations. 930 01:06:39,662 --> 01:06:42,581 But to actually be in the water with the fish... 931 01:06:47,711 --> 01:06:49,172 [BUBBLING] 932 01:07:12,070 --> 01:07:14,613 It was surreal... 933 01:07:14,697 --> 01:07:17,408 to see those little fish captured 934 01:07:17,491 --> 01:07:20,036 in a way that is unlike anything in the history of the planet 935 01:07:20,119 --> 01:07:21,870 until we came along. 936 01:07:23,997 --> 01:07:25,041 [SCOFFS] 937 01:07:25,874 --> 01:07:29,420 For a moment... I felt as if... 938 01:07:29,503 --> 01:07:32,715 a piece of me was being ripped out of the ocean as well. 939 01:07:39,012 --> 01:07:42,808 [JACKSON] Overfishing, it's an amazing phenomenon. 940 01:07:44,643 --> 01:07:48,939 Who would've ever thought that people would be able 941 01:07:49,022 --> 01:07:53,444 to fish so efficiently and so effectively and so strongly 942 01:07:53,527 --> 01:07:57,990 that we would reduce the stocks of these species that were present 943 01:07:58,074 --> 01:07:59,700 by the billions 944 01:07:59,783 --> 01:08:03,662 to the point of obliteration or near-obliteration? 945 01:08:04,580 --> 01:08:08,209 But we have done it systematically with enormous success. 946 01:08:10,211 --> 01:08:13,339 We've done it to Atlantic tuna. 947 01:08:14,632 --> 01:08:16,717 We've done it to sharks. 948 01:08:16,800 --> 01:08:19,011 We've done it to cod. 949 01:08:20,179 --> 01:08:21,555 We've done it to halibut... 950 01:08:22,556 --> 01:08:27,520 to anchovies, to herring, to sardines. 951 01:08:27,603 --> 01:08:29,480 We've done it to... 952 01:08:29,563 --> 01:08:32,858 just about every damn thing you would ever wanna eat. 953 01:08:37,405 --> 01:08:40,116 [EARLE] Good job, Bryce. 954 01:08:40,199 --> 01:08:42,410 We have this idea, we humans, 955 01:08:42,493 --> 01:08:45,954 that the ocean is so big, so vast, so resilient, 956 01:08:46,038 --> 01:08:47,581 it doesn't matter what we do to it. 957 01:08:47,665 --> 01:08:49,458 That was... that was crazy. 958 01:08:49,542 --> 01:08:50,834 [EARLE] Our ignorance 959 01:08:50,918 --> 01:08:53,546 is really the biggest problem that we now face. 960 01:08:53,629 --> 01:08:57,383 We now can learn from the past... 961 01:08:57,466 --> 01:08:58,717 and as never before, 962 01:08:58,801 --> 01:09:02,388 do something about it before it's too late. 963 01:09:02,471 --> 01:09:04,640 [STEVENS] Sylvia has a wish for the planet... 964 01:09:04,723 --> 01:09:07,100 what she calls her Mission Blue. 965 01:09:07,185 --> 01:09:08,936 And it's really very simple. 966 01:09:09,019 --> 01:09:13,524 Protect the ocean in the same way we now protect the land. 967 01:09:15,193 --> 01:09:20,489 [EARLE] In 1872, the United States began establishing a system of parks... 968 01:09:20,573 --> 01:09:24,743 that some say is the best idea America ever had. 969 01:09:24,827 --> 01:09:28,247 About 12% of the land around the world is now protected, 970 01:09:29,248 --> 01:09:34,170 but only a fraction of 1% of the ocean is fully protected globally. 971 01:09:36,046 --> 01:09:39,342 [STEVENS] How did you come up with the idea for Hope Spots? 972 01:09:39,425 --> 01:09:40,759 [EARLE] On the land, 973 01:09:40,843 --> 01:09:43,637 people have recognized places that are in good shape, 974 01:09:43,721 --> 01:09:46,515 but they're under threat as hot spots. 975 01:09:46,599 --> 01:09:47,600 Hot spots. 976 01:09:47,683 --> 01:09:48,684 And I said, "Well, 977 01:09:48,767 --> 01:09:51,687 we need to do the same thing, of course, for the ocean... 978 01:09:51,770 --> 01:09:54,857 but why don't we call them Hope Spots?" 979 01:09:54,940 --> 01:09:58,236 Because, if we take action, recovery, 980 01:09:58,319 --> 01:10:01,071 we're at least making them better than they otherwise would be... 981 01:10:01,154 --> 01:10:03,031 Cause for hope. 982 01:10:04,992 --> 01:10:06,159 [DEGRUY] She's just asking people 983 01:10:06,244 --> 01:10:10,456 to do everything in their power to preserve large portions of the ocean. 984 01:10:10,539 --> 01:10:13,917 Not pin pricks, but large portions of the ocean. 985 01:10:14,001 --> 01:10:15,753 That's a reasonable wish. 986 01:10:15,836 --> 01:10:18,881 The biggest thing we've done to change the oceans to date... 987 01:10:18,964 --> 01:10:21,800 is kill things that live there. 988 01:10:22,926 --> 01:10:26,930 And if you can say, "In this place, we're not going to do that," 989 01:10:27,014 --> 01:10:28,932 that's really worth doing. 990 01:10:29,016 --> 01:10:31,894 [JACKSON] You know, the Hope Spots can't just be pretty places. 991 01:10:31,977 --> 01:10:37,858 The Hope Spots have to be places where the potential is identified, 992 01:10:37,941 --> 01:10:40,278 the threats are identified... 993 01:10:40,361 --> 01:10:44,782 and some kind of concrete action is taken. 994 01:10:55,334 --> 01:10:58,254 [STEVENS] This is Cabo Pulmo, Mexico. 995 01:11:00,339 --> 01:11:04,635 For more than a century, it was a thriving fishing village... 996 01:11:06,262 --> 01:11:08,681 and then the tourists came... 997 01:11:09,973 --> 01:11:12,393 and then the sport fishermen... 998 01:11:12,476 --> 01:11:17,147 and then the industrial fleet with their long lines and nets. 999 01:11:18,148 --> 01:11:22,361 By the 1980s, so much had been taken from the surrounding water... 1000 01:11:22,445 --> 01:11:25,113 that nothing was left. 1001 01:11:27,157 --> 01:11:32,288 In 1997, the people who live here took the ocean back. 1002 01:11:34,373 --> 01:11:38,336 Together they created a Hope Spot 70 square kilometers around, 1003 01:11:38,419 --> 01:11:42,840 making it completely off limits to fishing and dumping and drilling. 1004 01:11:48,637 --> 01:11:50,848 [JACKSON] Okay, come on, come on, come on. [LAUGHS] 1005 01:11:50,931 --> 01:11:53,058 [STEVENS] Since the protected zone was established, 1006 01:11:53,141 --> 01:11:56,812 Cabo Pulmo has replaced fishing with ecotourism 1007 01:11:56,895 --> 01:11:58,481 - and the community is thriving. - [LAUGHING] 1008 01:11:58,564 --> 01:12:01,609 Well, how is it possible that this is our first dive together? 1009 01:12:01,692 --> 01:12:03,319 - I don't know, but it's true. - It is true. 1010 01:12:03,402 --> 01:12:04,903 It is absolutely true. 1011 01:12:04,987 --> 01:12:06,071 [INDISTINCT] 1012 01:12:07,155 --> 01:12:11,369 [EARLE] The idea of protecting the ocean to bring back the fish 1013 01:12:12,370 --> 01:12:14,121 is an idea whose time has come... 1014 01:12:15,288 --> 01:12:18,166 and it's beginning to work all over the world. 1015 01:13:38,956 --> 01:13:43,627 A Hope Spot is a place that gives you cause for hope. 1016 01:13:43,711 --> 01:13:48,966 It's a big chunk of the planet... or it can be a relatively small place. 1017 01:13:49,049 --> 01:13:50,551 Like Cabo Pulmo... 1018 01:13:50,634 --> 01:13:54,137 where... conscious efforts have shown that 1019 01:13:54,221 --> 01:13:58,141 if you make an investment... care for a place... 1020 01:13:58,225 --> 01:14:02,312 it can recover and be a symbol for hope. 1021 01:14:12,656 --> 01:14:13,741 [MAN] Bueno? 1022 01:14:13,824 --> 01:14:16,409 [JACKSON] Yeah, it's pretty amazing. 1023 01:14:16,494 --> 01:14:17,536 [LAUGHING] 1024 01:14:20,247 --> 01:14:22,791 I think I wanna be a jack. 1025 01:14:22,875 --> 01:14:25,210 - [JACKSON] You what? - I think I want to be a jack. 1026 01:14:25,293 --> 01:14:27,755 - [JACKSON] You wanna be a jack? - [BOTH LAUGHING] 1027 01:14:48,776 --> 01:14:52,445 [EARLE] Every place, even the small places, make a difference. 1028 01:14:52,530 --> 01:14:56,158 But we need to scale up. We need to think big. 1029 01:15:15,886 --> 01:15:19,598 [STEVENS] Sylvia has invited me to join her on a mission to Australia... 1030 01:15:19,682 --> 01:15:24,186 already home to one of the largest Hope Spots in the world. 1031 01:15:25,979 --> 01:15:29,942 She's here to campaign for one that's even bigger. 1032 01:15:30,025 --> 01:15:34,071 Whilst we were running this campaign, the Global Census of Marine Life came out, 1033 01:15:34,154 --> 01:15:37,365 and it showed that Australia had more marine diversity, 1034 01:15:37,449 --> 01:15:39,868 more marine species than any other country in the world. 1035 01:15:39,952 --> 01:15:43,413 Like, 95% are just found there and nowhere else on the planet. 1036 01:15:43,496 --> 01:15:44,832 [ZETHOVEN] Yeah, I was gonna say that. 1037 01:15:44,915 --> 01:15:46,166 - That's amazing! - Yeah. 1038 01:16:07,688 --> 01:16:09,648 [STEVENS] Sylvia wanted to take me to a place 1039 01:16:09,732 --> 01:16:12,943 she'd been before in the Coral Sea... 1040 01:16:13,026 --> 01:16:16,071 more than 100 miles out into the open ocean. 1041 01:16:35,674 --> 01:16:37,092 [GROANS] 1042 01:16:43,306 --> 01:16:44,642 [INDISTINCT TALKING] 1043 01:16:59,489 --> 01:17:02,701 [EARLE] Australia is a leader in terms of establishing protection for the sea, 1044 01:17:02,785 --> 01:17:06,997 starting in the mid-1970s with the establishment 1045 01:17:07,080 --> 01:17:10,333 of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority... 1046 01:17:10,417 --> 01:17:13,796 and more recently, a designation of the Coral Sea, 1047 01:17:13,879 --> 01:17:17,633 a large area that basically hugs the Great Barrier Reef. 1048 01:17:24,264 --> 01:17:27,559 My first glimpse of the Coral Sea underwater 1049 01:17:27,643 --> 01:17:29,061 was in the 1970s. 1050 01:17:30,062 --> 01:17:32,105 It was really pristine, 1051 01:17:32,189 --> 01:17:36,318 in the sense that little fishing had taken place there at that time. 1052 01:17:53,001 --> 01:17:55,671 [STEVENS] There are still large areas of the Coral Sea 1053 01:17:55,754 --> 01:17:58,256 that are untouched and unspoiled. 1054 01:17:58,340 --> 01:18:01,093 But making it a no catch, no dump zone 1055 01:18:01,176 --> 01:18:04,179 is the kind of insurance that is needed to keep it that way. 1056 01:18:06,389 --> 01:18:07,891 - Looks beautiful though, huh? - Sure does. 1057 01:18:07,975 --> 01:18:09,685 You can kind of tell why nobody's out here. 1058 01:18:09,768 --> 01:18:11,186 It's so far. 1059 01:18:29,662 --> 01:18:30,956 [SEAGULLS CALLING] 1060 01:19:35,896 --> 01:19:40,233 [STEVENS] We've come out all this way and all we find are ruins. 1061 01:19:42,945 --> 01:19:46,990 The place Sylvia remembered so vividly is gone. 1062 01:19:53,496 --> 01:19:56,834 [EARLE] I am driven by what I know... 1063 01:19:56,917 --> 01:19:59,252 by the reality... 1064 01:19:59,336 --> 01:20:03,173 as a scientist looking... at the evidence... 1065 01:20:03,256 --> 01:20:07,970 that my species, the world I know, the world I love, 1066 01:20:08,053 --> 01:20:09,554 is in trouble. 1067 01:20:12,432 --> 01:20:18,146 People I know and love... may not realize how much trouble we're in. 1068 01:20:46,008 --> 01:20:48,969 - So that's the Coral Sea, huh? - Yeah. 1069 01:20:50,095 --> 01:20:52,597 - Lot of dead coral, though. - Yeah. 1070 01:20:52,680 --> 01:20:55,350 - Still not many fish. - [EARLE] No. 1071 01:20:56,726 --> 01:20:58,854 Not one shark. Not even one. 1072 01:20:58,937 --> 01:21:00,188 [STEVENS] Not one shark. [GROARK] No barracuda. 1073 01:21:00,272 --> 01:21:03,150 We were hoping for the schooling barracuda here. 1074 01:21:03,233 --> 01:21:04,609 No fish. I mean... 1075 01:21:04,692 --> 01:21:06,778 You... you were expecting more, right? 1076 01:21:06,862 --> 01:21:09,948 Oh, heavens yes. Hoping for it. 1077 01:21:10,032 --> 01:21:12,993 Just never thought, way out here, we'd have no fish. 1078 01:21:13,076 --> 01:21:14,119 No. 1079 01:21:14,202 --> 01:21:17,956 Do you think it was bleaching and just the world of... 1080 01:21:18,040 --> 01:21:19,082 The world is changing. 1081 01:21:19,166 --> 01:21:22,085 Half the coral reefs around the world are gone. 1082 01:21:22,169 --> 01:21:25,172 So we're lucky to see what we did see. 1083 01:21:28,591 --> 01:21:29,592 Wow. 1084 01:21:34,932 --> 01:21:36,599 [EARLE] Coral reef is like a city. 1085 01:21:37,600 --> 01:21:40,145 It's not just the buildings. 1086 01:21:40,228 --> 01:21:41,980 New York needs its taxi drivers. 1087 01:21:42,064 --> 01:21:43,690 It needs its doctors. 1088 01:21:43,773 --> 01:21:45,275 It needs the teachers. 1089 01:21:45,358 --> 01:21:48,904 It needs all the pieces that make the system function. 1090 01:21:50,238 --> 01:21:51,573 The corals need the fish. 1091 01:21:51,656 --> 01:21:52,657 The fish need the coral. 1092 01:21:52,740 --> 01:21:54,826 You take the fish away, the corals die. 1093 01:21:54,910 --> 01:21:56,661 You take the corals away, the fish die. 1094 01:21:59,414 --> 01:22:02,417 We can do things to the ocean. We will do things. 1095 01:22:02,500 --> 01:22:03,751 But first we ought to think about 1096 01:22:03,835 --> 01:22:07,047 how can we use the ocean and not use it up. 1097 01:22:10,633 --> 01:22:13,136 [STEVENS] So, Syl, the corals just didn't look good or they... they were... 1098 01:22:13,220 --> 01:22:15,847 [EARLE] No, the living stuff was mostly young. 1099 01:22:15,931 --> 01:22:17,599 Nothing old that... 1100 01:22:17,682 --> 01:22:20,268 Well, the reef... the reef here were big. 1101 01:22:22,354 --> 01:22:24,522 Coral's what you expect to see in the Coral Sea. 1102 01:22:24,606 --> 01:22:26,358 And we're in the middle of nowhere. 1103 01:22:26,441 --> 01:22:28,651 - That's what's so... - I know this is... [CHUCKLES] 1104 01:22:28,735 --> 01:22:31,238 - We're in the middle of everywhere? - Middle of everywhere. 1105 01:22:32,364 --> 01:22:34,532 - Okay. - [STEVENS] Okay. 1106 01:22:34,616 --> 01:22:36,784 - Thanks, Sylvia. - [EARLE] Yeah. 1107 01:22:55,678 --> 01:22:59,141 [STEVENS] Sylvia, I honestly have never met anyone like you. 1108 01:22:59,224 --> 01:23:02,269 Your energy, your tenacity, your passion... 1109 01:23:02,352 --> 01:23:05,147 It's... It's inspiring. 1110 01:23:05,230 --> 01:23:08,566 Do you ever have that moment where you say to yourself, 1111 01:23:08,650 --> 01:23:12,445 "I'm not gonna do it today. I'm gonna just take the day off"? 1112 01:23:14,072 --> 01:23:16,866 [EARLE] If you saw a child 1113 01:23:16,949 --> 01:23:21,538 falling out of a 10-story window, 1114 01:23:21,621 --> 01:23:24,916 and you have the ability to reach out and catch him, 1115 01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:27,335 you do everything you can to position yourself to catch him. 1116 01:23:27,419 --> 01:23:29,587 You don't take a break and say, 1117 01:23:29,671 --> 01:23:32,215 "Oh... while the child is falling out of the sky, 1118 01:23:32,299 --> 01:23:33,925 I'm gonna go over..." 1119 01:23:34,009 --> 01:23:37,095 No, you're there 24/7. 1120 01:23:37,179 --> 01:23:40,182 You're there every... with every ounce of what you've got. 1121 01:23:40,265 --> 01:23:41,766 You want to save that child. 1122 01:23:42,559 --> 01:23:45,895 ♪ Looking up from underneath ♪ 1123 01:23:45,978 --> 01:23:49,024 ♪ Fractured moonlight on the sea ♪ 1124 01:23:49,107 --> 01:23:52,735 ♪ Reflections still look the same to me ♪ 1125 01:23:52,819 --> 01:23:54,946 ♪ As before I went under ♪ 1126 01:23:55,030 --> 01:23:58,366 ♪ And it's peaceful in the deep ♪ 1127 01:23:58,450 --> 01:24:01,453 ♪ Cathedral where you cannot breathe ♪ 1128 01:24:01,536 --> 01:24:06,458 ♪ No need to pray, no need to speak ♪ 1129 01:24:06,541 --> 01:24:09,711 ♪ Now I am under all ♪ 1130 01:24:09,794 --> 01:24:10,920 [CAMERON] We're not out of the game yet. 1131 01:24:11,003 --> 01:24:14,882 We could still win this thing if we were able to turn it around. 1132 01:24:14,966 --> 01:24:17,177 We've just got to get out there 1133 01:24:17,260 --> 01:24:19,971 and make the public aware of what's happening 1134 01:24:20,055 --> 01:24:21,514 and make them care about what's happening. 1135 01:24:28,146 --> 01:24:29,814 We've got to really rewire 1136 01:24:29,897 --> 01:24:33,360 the way human beings look at our relationship to nature. 1137 01:24:34,194 --> 01:24:37,530 ♪ And the arms of the ocean ♪ 1138 01:24:37,614 --> 01:24:41,201 ♪ Are carrying me ♪ 1139 01:24:41,284 --> 01:24:43,870 ♪ And all this devotion ♪ 1140 01:24:43,953 --> 01:24:47,999 ♪ Was rushing out of me ♪ 1141 01:24:48,083 --> 01:24:50,918 ♪ In the crushes of heaven ♪ 1142 01:24:51,002 --> 01:24:54,297 ♪ For a sinner like me ♪ 1143 01:24:54,381 --> 01:25:00,345 ♪ But the arms of the ocean delivered me ♪ 1144 01:25:02,054 --> 01:25:04,932 [DEGRUY] In the same way that humans have the ability 1145 01:25:05,016 --> 01:25:08,603 to consciously shift the balance of the Earth, which we've done, 1146 01:25:08,686 --> 01:25:13,858 we also have the capacity and capability of stopping it. 1147 01:25:13,941 --> 01:25:15,818 We can shift it. We have to. 1148 01:25:15,902 --> 01:25:17,904 It just... It has to happen. 1149 01:25:17,987 --> 01:25:20,782 What we have on Earth is all we'll ever have. 1150 01:25:20,865 --> 01:25:22,367 We need to remember that. 1151 01:25:23,993 --> 01:25:25,828 [SAFINA] The sad fact of it is that... 1152 01:25:25,912 --> 01:25:29,040 the ocean could be empty and it would still look the same. 1153 01:25:30,125 --> 01:25:34,712 It's a very hard thing to convey what's happening, 1154 01:25:34,796 --> 01:25:37,089 how it will affect you personally. 1155 01:25:37,174 --> 01:25:42,345 And so as the ocean is being emptied, and as the ocean is dying, 1156 01:25:42,429 --> 01:25:46,224 the surface looks the same, the waves look the same. 1157 01:25:49,394 --> 01:25:52,104 [EARLE] If I could be born anywhere in time, 1158 01:25:52,189 --> 01:25:54,106 it would be now. 1159 01:25:54,191 --> 01:25:59,529 It would be now because this is the time, as never before, that we know. 1160 01:25:59,612 --> 01:26:03,200 We understand what we didn't know 50 years ago. 1161 01:26:05,785 --> 01:26:10,790 If we wait another 50 years... opportunities we now have will be gone. 1162 01:26:12,292 --> 01:26:13,793 This is the moment. 1163 01:26:13,876 --> 01:26:19,048 Our decisions, our actions will shape everything that follows. 1164 01:26:29,517 --> 01:26:34,397 ♪ How much do I love you? ♪ 1165 01:26:36,733 --> 01:26:41,488 ♪ I'll tell you no lie ♪ 1166 01:26:43,656 --> 01:26:48,370 ♪ How deep is the ocean? ♪ 1167 01:26:50,663 --> 01:26:55,543 ♪ How high is the sky? ♪ 1168 01:26:57,254 --> 01:27:03,092 ♪ How many times a day ♪ 1169 01:27:03,175 --> 01:27:08,806 ♪ Do I think of you? ♪ 1170 01:27:12,227 --> 01:27:16,022 ♪ How many roses ♪ 1171 01:27:17,023 --> 01:27:23,029 ♪ Are sprinkled, sprinkled with dew? ♪ 1172 01:27:25,698 --> 01:27:30,703 ♪ How far would I travel ♪ 1173 01:27:32,705 --> 01:27:37,585 ♪ To be where you are? ♪ 1174 01:27:39,712 --> 01:27:44,592 ♪ How far is the journey ♪ 1175 01:27:46,761 --> 01:27:51,349 ♪ From here to a star? ♪ 1176 01:27:53,518 --> 01:27:59,566 ♪ And if I ever lost you ♪ 1177 01:28:01,025 --> 01:28:06,197 ♪ How much would I cry? ♪ 1178 01:28:08,366 --> 01:28:13,830 ♪ How deep is the ocean? ♪ 1179 01:28:15,457 --> 01:28:19,711 ♪ How high is the sky? ♪ 1180 01:28:22,254 --> 01:28:28,761 ♪ And if I ever lost you ♪ 1181 01:28:29,929 --> 01:28:34,726 ♪ How much would I cry? ♪ 1182 01:28:37,354 --> 01:28:42,317 ♪ How deep is the ocean? ♪ 1183 01:28:44,276 --> 01:28:47,489 ♪ How high ♪ 1184 01:28:47,572 --> 01:28:52,577 ♪ Is the sky? ♪ 1185 01:28:52,660 --> 01:28:58,791 ♪ How high is the sky? ♪