The World Is Blue

The World Is Blue by legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis. In recent decades we’ve learned more about the ocean than in all previous human history combined. But, this eloquent, urgent, and fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Modern overexploitation has driven many species to the verge of extinction, from tiny biota to magnificent creatures like tuna and whales.

In the book, she articulates, through personal experiences and scientific documentation, how the decline of the oceans is happening parallel to, and delicately intertwined with the fate of the atmosphere and what is happening on land. Sylvia argues passionately and persuasively to find responsible, renewable strategies that safeguard the natural systems that sustain us. Fortunately, there is reason for hope, but what we do (or fail to do) in the next ten years may well resonate for the next ten thousand. Her book is more than a wake up call.

Sylvia Earle is a former NOAA chief scientist. She is a National Geographic Explorer in residence, a woman who led a five year sea voyage and participated in almost 75 other expeditions, lectured in 70 countries, and authored more than 170 publications. She has been scuba diving for over half a century, walked the ocean floor some 1,250 feet below the surface, and utilized 30 different types of submarines. She was named “Her Deepness” by the New Yorker and the New York Times, a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and Time Magazine’s first “Hero for the Planet.” Sylvia Earle is also a key reason why Google Earth developed Google Oceans – a phenomenal learning tool to help protect and maintain the ocean’s health.

She is the most qualified individual on earth to promote saving it. She understands that the ocean is the source of most of the oxygen we breath, most of water we drink (rain water) and a large part of the food we eat. She systematically outlines what man has done to the ocean over the last 100 years and the implications if we continue on this path. Dr. Earle has a wish in The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One and is asking the world to create Marine protected zones in the Ocean. Right now less than 1% of the ocean is protected. She believes that if we can raise that to 10%, 20% or more, we can save the ocean and our planet.