“It’s one of the great mysteries of our time,” Dr. Sylvia Earle tells me. “How can it be that we know more about what’s going on in Mars than we do about what’s happening in the deep sea? A dozen people have walked on the moon and just over a dozen as of now have gone to the deepest part of the ocean. It’s only seven miles—only 11 kilometres!”
As it happens, this firebrand 89-year-old has walked on the ocean floor—not at that depth, but deeper than anyone else. Earle holds the record for the deepest untethered seafloor walk, and she set it back in 1979, when she spent more than two hours on the ground in the inky depths, 400 metres below the surface. “It was in one of these atmospheric diving suits that looks like an astronaut suit, or some say like a walking refrigerator,” she recalls. “It’s a little submarine with arms and legs.”
At this point, she has driven 30 different types of submersibles, assisting engineers to develop personal submersible technology, in pursuit of learning as much as possible about the almost unknown, deepest oceans. Indeed, few people have made a greater contribution to the conservation of the seas than the woman nicknamed “Her Deepness.”
A pioneering American oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer, Earle is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, the TED Prize, Time magazine’s first Hero for the Planet award and the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award. In 2022, Aurora Expeditions named a cruise ship in her honour and next June—in her 90th birthday year—Earle will join Aurora in partnership with Ocean Geographic onboard the Sylvia Earle for an Arctic climate expedition, sailing from Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The expedition seeks to honour Earle’s lifetime of ocean service and raise awareness for the protection of the fragile Arctic region.
In recent years, Earle’s work has focussed on Mission Blue, an organisation she founded after winning the TED Prize in 2009. “If the ocean is in trouble, you’re in trouble, we’re in trouble,” she says. “And the ocean is in trouble.” Mission Blue aims to protect 30 percent of the world’s seas by 2030, by identifying Hope Spots: patches of water that contain important natural ecosystems that are critical to the ocean’s health, and therefore the planet’s. To date, 160 Hope Spots have been named in 60 countries; some are already marine protected areas, and others are progressing towards protection.
Earle’s love of the ocean began in earnest when at the age of 12, her family moved to a seaside house in Florida. Here, the waters became her playground: “What an opportunity to just ask questions, see little fish, see these spider crabs, see the seagrass meadows filled with little sea horses and ask: ‘Who are you? What’s it like down there?’” From chatting with seahorses, Earle went on to earn a PhD (with her early research work focussing on algae)—and to become the owner of many ‘firsts.’
In 1970, she led the first all-female team of aquanauts to spend two weeks living in an underwater facility, observing marine life at close quarters. Earle was the first woman to become chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And in her early career in 1953, she was among the first scientists to use scuba tanks, despite there being no instruction manual.
“We were given two words of instruction,” she laughs, “breathe naturally.”
