Carolina QuotesSince the 1800's, numerous species and entire complex living ecosystems many millions of years in the making have been decimated or significantly altered, from populations of whales and other large mammals to dozens of commercially valued fish species, all marine turtles, many sharks, and numerous small creatures including certain krill, crabs, and shrimp. Worldwide, the living network of microorganisms that shape the basic ingredients of the ocean's "living soup" has been tugged, the system nudged, with unknown consequences. Far too little is known about the earth's living processes to know or predict the specific consequences of our tinkering, but the outcome is not likely to be favorable for humankind.
Sylvia A. Earle Connected to the Carolinas
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“Since the 1800's, numerous species and entire complex living…” Sylvia A. Earle. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-3F007982C4. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/3f007982c4
More from Sylvia A. Earle
it's still there - the habit of thinking that the ocean is too big to fail. And we're still taking life in the ocean for granted. We still think that we have the capacity to take fish on a scale that we currently are and continue to do it forever.
Curiously, those who claim to believe that the earth and all living things were created by God in fact appear to place greater value on human works and the judgment of mankind.
Diving into the ocean, it’s like diving into the history of life on earth, not just over the last 50 or 1,000, but the last million, 10 million, 100 million years, because creatures are there that have been there for several hundred million years, not those same creatures, but their near relatives, like jellyfish; like — well, sharks have been around for 300 million years; horseshoe crabs, creatures that lured me into the ocean as a child in New Jersey, have a history that goes back at least 300 million years; so many forms of life that were found in the ocean long before there were multicellular creatures occupying space on the land.