Sylvia Earle. Nicole Ostrander

Post 1 Sylvia Earle

Nicole Ostrander

“The single non-negotiable thing life requires is water.” (Sylvia Earle. The World is Blue, 2009.). From a young age, Sylvia Earle was mesmerized by nature. Born in Camden, New Jersey she recalls her mother teaching her to be amazed about the world around her; “My mother would show my brothers and I how beautiful frogs could be and how fascinating it was to look at their gorgeous golden eyes.”(Biography Today, 2010, pg1.) At the age of twelve her family left their home in Camden and moved to Clearwater, Florida. A place she would later call her “backyard paradise”. Clearwater is known for its sunny weather and coastal white beaches and it was here that Sylvia’s love of the ocean swelled and took root. In 1955 Sylvia graduated with a major in botany. She continued schooling and in 1956 got her masters in botany and while continuing to get her Ph.D. Sylvia married John Taylor in 1957. A fellow scientist John Taylor was a zoologist and they soon had two children together, Elizabeth and John. John Taylor and Sylvia would later divorce, but she would eventually get her Ph.D. in 1966.

Sylvia first learned how to dive while attending college in the 1950’s. At the time diving was still risky and was considered dangerous until the Self Contained Underwater Apparatus or SCUBA suit was born. Sylvia was one of the first to use one of these suits her professor at the time somehow managed to get ahold of two of only a handful of the new SCUBA suits. It was through this experience with diving that Sylvia got her first glimpse at the deep ocean. Being comfortable with diving would deem itself an incredibly valuable skill as she continued her career into this new underwater 3D world.

It was during this time people started discovering places they’d never been before with a newfound thirst. While Sylvia was racing to the bottom of the ocean NASA was racing to the moon. By 1969 Neil Armstrong was taking his “first steps for man and first leaps for mankind”, while Sylvia was hunkering down in Tektite 2. She was captain on the first all-female teams to work on the Tektite mission. It was a time when science was exploding and new advances in technologies were being developed every day and the ocean was an alien universe just waiting to be discovered.

Tektite 2 was an underwater bunker in the Virgin Islands where Sylvia and 4 other women would record the underwater life around them for up to 12 hours a day. This was a historical moment for marine biologists as well as women. Sylvia Earle, Ann Hartline, Alina Szmant and Margaret Lucas blazed a path for future women scientists. They broke stereotypes about women working in science and proved that not only can women be good at science, but they can do it without the help of men. Tektite 2’s mission was to discover never before seen underwater ecosystems and to record the habitats current health for later comparison. As well as prove that underwater laboratories could be done safely, efficiently and cheaply. The project was undoubltly a success and Sylvia would go on to become the first to reach 1,250 feet in a JIM suit, and in 1990 she became the chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Today Sylvia Earle is 84 years old and spends her time advocating for the importance of our oceans health. She travels the globe lecturing students and colleges on the dangers of dead zones, global warming, melting ice caps and their direct correlation to high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. She describes how the site of her famous underwater home, Tektite 2 is now one of 500+ dead zones. Once a beautiful alien world full of coral, fish, sharks and plants, is now a desolate habitat hardly capable of sustaining life. We still have so much of the ocean to discover and even now in 2019 we’ve only seen 5% of it. It’s vital that young scientist continue to understand and learn about the ecosystems hidden beneath the waves. She urges the world to see the importance of our oceans and their direct impact on our lives. “No oceans, no life. No blue, no green.” (Sylvia Earle, National Geographic. 2014.).