Sylvia Earle is an American oceanographer. She has a variety of fond nicknames -"Her Deepness" and "The Sturgeon General" because of her many accomplishments.
Birth and Childhood
She was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey on August 30, 1935, and raised on a small farm by her parents, Alice Freas and Lewis Reade.
As a child, Syvlia loved to explore and discover the creatures and plants in the wilderness around her home. Her parents taught her to respect wild creatures and not to be afraid of the unknown.
When she was 13, Sylvia's family moved to Dunedin, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico. There, she continued her fascination with discovery. Although her parents could not afford to send her to college, she was an exceptional student and won scholarships to Florida State University, where she received her B.S. degree in 1955. Throughout her school years, she supplemented her scholarship money by working in the college laboratories.
It was in Florida that Sylvia first learned to scuba dive, and desired to use what was then new technology to study marine life from a close-up vantage point. Fascinated by all aspects of the ocean and marine life, Sylvia decided to specialize in botany.
Education and Family
Syvlia earned her Master's at Duke University in 1956. Afterwards, she married and start a family. At the same time, she remained active in her profession.
In 1964, when her children were two and four, Sylvia traveled to the Indian Ocean for six weeks to join a National Science Foundation expedition. Indeed, she continued to participate in research projects all over the world.
In 1966, she received her Ph.D. from Duke. Her dissertation Phaeophyta of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico created a sensation in the oceanographic community, because never before had a marine scientist made such a long and detailed firsthand study of aquatic plant life.
In 1968, she traveled to a hundred feet below the waters of the Bahamas in the submersible Deep Diver. She was four months pregnant at the time.
Sylvia has spent her lifetime working on the project: cataloging every species of plant that can be found in the Gulf of Mexico.
Positions
1967-1969 -- Radcliffe Institute Scholar
1967-1981 -- Research Fellow, and then Associate at Harvard University
1969-1981 -- Research Associate at the University of California, Berkeley
1979-1986 -- Curator of Phycology at the California Academy of Sciences
Tektite Project
In 1969 Sylvia applied to participate in the Tektite project. This project was sponsored jointly by the U.S. Navy, the Department of the Interior and NASA, and it allowed teams of scientist to live for weeks at a time in an enclosed habitat on the ocean floor fifty feet below the surface, off the Virgin Islands.
By this time, Sylvia had spent more than a thousand research hours underwater, more than any other scientists who applied to the program, but, as she says, "the people in charge just couldn't cope with the idea of men and women living together underwater."
The result was Tektite II, Mission 6, an all-female research expedition led by Sylvia herself. She and four other women dove 50 feet below the surface to the small structure that was their home for the next two weeks. The publicity surrounding this adventure made Sylvia Earle a recognizable face beyond the scientific community.
Indeed, the scientists found they had become celebrities and were given a ticker-tape parade and a White House reception upon their return to the surface. After that Sylvia was increasingly in demand as public speaker, and she became an outspoken advocate of undersea research. At the same time, she began to write for National Geographic and to produce books and films.
Besides trying to arouse greater public interest in the sea, she hoped to raise public awareness of the damage being done to our aquasphere by pollution and environmental degradation.
In the 1970s, scientific missions took Sylvia Earle to the Galapagos, to Panama, to China and the Bahamas and to the Indian Ocean. During this period she also began a productive collaboration with undersea photographer Al Giddings. Together, they investigated the battleship graveyard in the Caroline Islands of the South Pacific. In 1977 they made their first voyage following the great sperm whales. In a series of expeditions they followed the whales from Hawaii to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Bermuda and Alaska. Their journeys were recorded in the documentary film Gentle Giants of the Pacific (1980).
In 1979, she made an open-ocean JIM suit dive, setting the depth record (for man or woman) of 1250 feet. Sylvia walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any living human being before or since. At the bottom, she detached from the vessel and explored the depths for two and a half hours with only a communication line connecting her to the submersible, and nothing at all connecting her to the world above. She described this adventure in her 1980 book: Exploring the Deep Frontier.
From 1980 to 1984 she served on NACOA (the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere). In 1985 she founded Deep Ocean Engineering along with her husband, engineer and submersible designer Graham Hawkes, to design, operate, support, and consult on piloted and robotic sub sea systems. In 1987 The Deep Ocean Engineering team designed and built the Deep Rover research submarine, which operates down to 1000 meters. She holds the women's record for a solo dive in a deep submersible (3280 feet, 1000m) achieved in the Deep Rover.
Sylvia took a leave of absence from her businesses in 1990 to accept an appointment as the Chief Scientist for NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration). There, among other duties, she was responsible for monitoring the health of the nation's waters. In this capacity she also reported on the environmental damage wrought by Iraq's burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields.
In 1992, she founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research to further advance marine engineering. Today, she serves as Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society and the company known as DOER Marine is run by her daughter. The company continues to design, build and operate innovative equipment for the deep ocean and other challenging environments.
To date, Sylvia has led over 70 expeditions, logging more than 6500 hours underwater. Among the more than 100 national and international honors she has received is the 2009 TED Prize for her proposal to establish a global network of marine protected areas. She calls these marine preserves "hope spots... to save and restore... the blue heart of the planet."
Sylvia has written more than 125 publications concerning marine science and technology, as well as several books.
Bibiography
Earle, Sylvia (1996). Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0449910652.
Earle, Sylvia (1999). Dive: My Adventures In the Deep Frontier. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271440.
Earle, Sylvia and Linda K. Glover (2008). Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas (National Geographic Atlas). National Geographic. ISBN 1426203195.
Earle, Sylvia (2001). Hello, Fish!: Visiting The Coral Reef. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792266978.
Cancelmo, Jesse and Sylvia Earle (2008). Texas Coral Reefs (Gulf Coast Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446335.
Earle, Sylvia. Editors John W., Jr. Tunnell, Ernesto A. Chavez, Kim Withers (2007). Coral Reefs of the Southern Gulf of Mexico (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies). Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585446173.
Earle, Sylvia (2000). Sea Critters. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792271815.
Rozwadowski, Helen M., and Sylvia Earle (Foreword) (2005). Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674016912.
Earle, Sylvia, Ed. and Linda K. Glover, Ed. (2004). Defying Ocean's End: An Agenda For Action. Island Press. ISBN 1559637552.
Earle, Sylvia (2003). Jump into Science: Coral Reefs. National Geographic Children's Books. ISBN 0792269535.
Earle, Sylvia (2001). National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean: The Deep Frontier. National Geographic. ISBN 0792264266.
Earle, Sylvia and Ellen J. Prager (2001). The Oceans. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0071381775.
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