You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Today is World Ocean Day, recognized by the UN as a day dedicated to raising awareness about the crucial role oceans play in our lives and to mobilizing a worldwide movement for its protection.
There's arguably no one better to mark this day than with ocean scientist and deep-sea diver Sylvia Earle.
She has spent more than 7,000 hours underwater.
Yes, you heard that number right.
She's witnessed the ocean at its most breathtaking and has watched it change in ways most of us will never see firsthand.
I was told 50 years ago to be afraid if I saw sharks.
Now I'm afraid because I don't see sharks when I go diving.
We've eliminated more than half of them since I began diving.
Sylvia, who's known in the ocean and diving communities as Her Deepness, is a marine biologist, National Geographic explorer at large and founder of Mission Blue, the organization behind a global network of ocean-protected areas called Hope Spots.
In 2009, she was awarded the TED Prize and used her wish to call for a global movement to protect the ocean's blue heart.
Seventeen years later, she returned to the TED stage to take stock of what's been lost, what's been saved and why it's still imperative to protect the oceans.
We can stop. trashing the ocean.
We can stop industrial fishing.
We must never allow mining the deep seas to sweep away the security the living deep ocean provides to all of us.
Armed with greater knowledge than has ever existed before.
We are the luckiest people ever to have arrived on Earth.
We not only can choose the future we want, we must.
And I feel so lucky I got to sit down with Sylvia in Vancouver after her talk to hear how she first fell in love with the deep sea, how she's using technology in her fight to save the oceans and the advice she'd give anyone who wants to help.
Just as I was about to lift off the bottom, I saw what I thought at first was like a big bag full of trash.
And I turned and looked and then I saw it had eyes.
That's all coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk and conversation of the day.
So in 2009, I stood here as a TED Prize recipient, given a chance to make a wish big enough to change the world.
So what was that wish?
I wish you would use all means at your disposal.
Films, expeditions, the web, new submarines.
A campaign to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas.
Hope spots.
Large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.
So, why did I make that wish?
How much of the ocean should be protected?
It's our life support system.
We need to treat all of it with respect.
Part of the reason for my wish was because of what I've seen, what I've explored, what I've come to know in a lifetime, of diving in to see things in ways that most people will never get to see, to use systems that make it possible to stay underwater for days, weeks at a time, to explore places that most people will never get to see, and to be a witness to the change that's currently taking place.
I've had the chance to use more than 30 different kinds of submarines, sometimes sharing the view with government officials such as the minister of the environment from Ecuador.
He was a little apprehensive.
But he warmed up to the idea thanks to a mola mola who kind of whispered in his ear.
I've also witnessed how we're trashing the ocean, more than just what we're putting into the ocean, what we're taking out, how we are stripping the ocean of the wild creatures that maintain Earth as a habitable planet.
When I voiced concerns.
When I served as the chief scientist of NOAA in 1990, I was called the Sturgeon General.
And I was told not to worry.
But in a few decades, with billions of dollars in subsidies, we have de-wilded the ocean, taking these wild animals to markets globally.
Industrial fishing is simply too efficient, and the markets are too demanding.
Wild animals, they don't stand a chance.
Nothing in their history enables them to escape the mechanized killing.
The fleets that move like cities across the high seas, taking... and marketing wildlife.
We almost succeeded in exterminating the great whales.
We need whales.
We need squid.
We need the menhaden, the tuna, the shrimp, the sharks, ocean wildlife.
We need them alive.
This is the carbon cycle in action.
This is how the living planet works.
Elements of the universe are moving from one creature to another, keeping Earth's chemistry within safe operating space.
I was told 50 years ago to be afraid if I saw sharks.
Now I'm afraid because I don't see sharks when I go diving.
We've eliminated more than half of them since I began diving.
In 2009, I wished for expeditions, films, the web, new submarines that inspire action.
In the same week that Google launched the first 10 hope spots, on Google Earth.
In 2010, at a TEDxAtSea expedition to the Galapagos Islands, we gathered together about 100 big thinkers to figure out what can we do to change this trajectory of decline.
On the spot, a commitment was made to protect the high seas, starting in the Sargasso Sea.
Sargasso Sea Hope Spot, the open ocean home for turtles and whales, and sharks and thousands of other sea creatures.
Another commitment was made to create a film, Mission Blue, and another one.
Sea of Hope.
Oceans 5 and Ocean Elders were launched.
Funds were created and secured to help protect the Galapagos Islands.
Five years later, with climate a top priority, TEDxC2 sailed to the South Pacific.
Champions were enlisted to help with the protection of the top of the world, the high seas in the Arctic, and to stop the trade in wildlife like polar bears for rugs and for trophies.
Others were enlisted to bring about full protection for krill and other wildlife in the waters around the Antarctic continent, along with other great ideas to try to protect the ocean's blue heart.
Sometimes I'm asked, so what's the best place to go diving?
And I say, almost anywhere 50 years ago.
So much has changed.
These are coral reefs.
They have top priority for protection.
We can't put them back once they're gone.
We can help restore some of the damage that we've inflicted.
But there's nothing like a place that is still intact after the long history that preceded humankind.
There is hope.
Because around the world, people are doing what they can to restore what has happened to the coral reefs hope spots that are growing and planting corals to help restore the damage.
There is reason for hope.
In the Nusropenia hope spot you can actually see the progression from a damaged reef after some time of care and then the restoration to what looks pretty good as compared to where it started.
I'm working with champions who are helping to inspire protection for wild rivers and pathways in the sea for manatees turtles, fish and whales.
Today, there are 169 hope spots in 116 countries.
Mangroves are being restored in 15 hope spots.
Seagrasses in 12.
Turtles are being monitored in 26 places, 30 for sharks and rays.
All of these places are creating awareness and enhanced protection.
I wish I could tell you about all of them because the stories are really cause for hope.
But let me just share a few.
Chile's coast and shoreline all shores were among Mission Blue's first hope spots.
They're now a part of Chile's commitment to protect more than half of their ocean area.
When I first went there, we found one Fernandez fur seal, just one.
It was thought that they were really gone.
That was a cause for hope.
We found one.
But today, with protection, there are more than 100,000 of these creatures.
In the shadow of New York City, the Shinnecock Bay Hope Spot is a place where people and nature thrived for thousands of years.
But 20th century markets for seafood beyond the bay upended the system.
More recently, the bay has been known for brown tides and the loss of seagrasses and oysters and clams that once filtered the water and fed people locally.
Dr Ellen Pickett, a scientist at Stony Brook University, set out with her colleagues to do something about it.
They figured it would take 53 million clams to restore health, to filter the water, eliminate those brown tides.
They've also calculated it would take 53 million dollars at a dollar per clam.
They didn't have 53 million, but they bought as many mom-and-dad clams as they could and they planted them, but the clams do the rest.
Seagrasses began to grow again once the clams were back.
The water became clearer.
Creatures that live and need the seagrasses began to return.
And now we can see that the place is delivering on the promise of hope.
In French Polynesia, at the Tete-a-Roe hope spot, Gertrude and Mary Bailey are pioneering science-based tourism with a conservation twist.
They have fiercely protected the sea turtle nests.
They've really taken the action to try to restore a place that was losing the wildlife that the ocean needs to have a secure planet.
And it's working.
Just a few years ago, there were only a very few turtles.
Now there are hundreds with protection.
Protection works.
So...
With the Tetiro Society, the Baileys are engaging tourists and scientists, kids and CEOs in a business plan that couples tourism revenue that is generated With exploration, research and conservation.
It's a blue-green, nature-positive model that generates income and jobs in a healthy ocean.
A new class of submersibles is being built that will take scientists, visitors and curious kids into French Polynesia's twilight zone to explore a part of a vital global system of animals that migrate up and down in the water column every day, every night.
Mission Blue is partnering with the Polynesian Voyagers, with Nainoa Thompson and those who travel across the Pacific in traditional voyaging canoes like the Hokulea, following ancient pathways depicted on traditional maps like an octopus the head of the octopuses in French Polynesia, but the arms extend to islands across the Pacific to hope spots that have been established in recent years.
A three-year expedition is currently right now underway to connect people across the Pacific with ancient values of ocean care and respect, where the subs, for the first time, they can go see who lives under the canoe.
This is, after all below, where sunlight shines, where it's cold, it's dark, it's high pressure, but it's where most of life on Earth actually exists.
The merger of new technology and ancient wisdom.
My wish was inspired by the keen desire to build a safety net of hope spots large enough to really understand and protect the ocean that protects all of us.
At the time, 99 percent of the ocean was open for exploitation.
Today, 97 percent is still open for exploitation.
It's time to seriously scale up.
HopeSpots are helping.
Tanzil AI is visualizing HopeSpots with global data on temperature chemistry, fishing pressure, whale migration routes, land-based information to better understand the problems in the context of the whole world.
Now we know.
Planting trees, planting corals and clams, it helps.
We can stop trashing the ocean.
We can stop industrial fishing.
We must never allow mining the deep seas to sweep away the security the living deep ocean provides.
Armed with greater knowledge than has ever existed before.
We are the luckiest people ever to have arrived on Earth.
We can choose the future we want.
We can.
Dinosaurs could not.
Truly, we have a choice.
We can find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural living systems that make possible our existence.
Systems that sustain us.
Hope spots are helping.
And you can, too.
Hope is contagious.
Hope is an idea worth spreading.
Thank you.
That was Sylvia Earle, and stick around when we come back.
I sit down with her deepness for a talk about falling in love with the ocean, what the deep ocean actually looks like and what gives her hope after seven decades of fighting for it.
Plus, she'll tell you the story about that trash bag with eyes.
Sylvia, thank you for sitting down with us.
Thank you for having me here.
Take us back.
What made you first interested in the ocean?
Well, why isn't everyone?
It's the dominant feature of our planet.
Without it, we wouldn't be here.
Yeah, yeah.
And, for those who don't know, you were the first human at the time to go 381 meters down into the ocean, doing what was essentially the underwater equivalent of a moonwalk.
Except I was all by myself.
Right.
So yeah, there's no team.
Except for all the life in the sea around.
And then you gained your nickname, Her Deepness, from this experience.
What does the bottom of the ocean look like?
What is it like to experience?
You know, the bottom of the ocean is a destination for many submarines who want to go exploring.
But the ocean is not the bottom, and it's not just the top.
It's all that water in between.
That is truly the ocean.
It's most of the world.
Land, whether it's islands or continents, it occupies only 3% of the biosphere where creatures live.
That includes us.
But the ocean, it's three-dimensional.
That's where 97% of Earth's water is.
And it's also where most of Earth's life is.
Right.
Can you describe what it was like for you to be that deep in the ocean?
It was just exhilarating to see all of those incredible creatures who had never seen a primate before.
And for me to see them in their own realm.
A lot of ocean exploration, not only in the past but even now, is accomplished by dragging a net and bringing it to the surface and looking at dead animals, dead plants, whatever it is.
But to be there...
And they're not afraid.
And I do not feel fear of them.
It's just magic.
You said that without oceans, there would be no rivers, no rainforests, no cities, no us.
That's right.
Why is the deep sea so important to the planet?
Can you unpack that for us?
Well, all of the living world, land and sea.
We need nature.
And some people say nature doesn't need us.
And there is some truth to that, because when you think about the history of the planet four and a half billion years, and we are newcomers
Our history goes back decades.
Maybe 300,000 years.
When you go in the ocean, you're swimming in the history of life on Earth.
The creatures who were there in the earliest days, I mean, at least they're more or less unchanged.
I mean, some of them, microbes, they continue to shape the world.
And we're just beginning to discover how...
Important.
They are.
When you think about just one, we didn't know Prochlorococcus existed until 1986.
And now we know it generates about 20 of the oxygen that we breathe, as well as supplying oxygen to life in the sea.
A lot of your career has focused on the deep sea, which few people get the same experience of seeing or trying to understand.
And I'm curious how you get people to care about a place and care about protecting a place that very few actually get to visit.
Well, not too many people get to go up as astronauts either.
True.
But what astronauts report back to us is life-changing in the images that they have brought back.
This is Earth.
It's this little blue miracle in the universe.
That's also miraculous, but it's not very friendly to the likes of us.
This is it.
This is our home.
But astronauts can only see the surface.
And there are ways with satellites to kind of glimpse what's down a little bit below.
But you have to actually get into the ocean.
And those of us who've been privileged to, at this stage in the 21st century, be able to go where few have gone before.
It's an obligation almost.
You want to have people know who is living there, what's going on.
If people don't know, they can't care.
You can know and not care, but knowing is the key, which is why I'm talking to you right now.
You mentioned your willingness to sit down with us, to get on stage and give a TED Talk.
This is all part of awareness, getting people to know and care.
What role does culture like film and television have to play in this kind of storytelling?
When you think about it, communication, most of our history was lived without books.
That's a big thought.
No libraries.
Part of the reason that we are kind of special. in all of the life on Earth.
We learn things, we share what we learn, and pass it on from one generation to the next.
So when I think about the children of the 21st century, We're the luckiest, whether you're a child or whether you've been around for a number of decades.
We are the most fortunate because of the accumulation of knowledge, language, music, numbers.
So when you think how fortunate we are, we also.
We have the best chance we'll ever have to secure an enduring future for us within the natural systems that keep us alive.
We have not been doing a good job of respecting just that.
What keeps us alive?
And what are we doing that pushes the boundaries?
What are the factors that keeps Earth exceptional in a universe?
That is beautiful, but I wouldn't want to try living on Mars.
Thank you.
In the face of global climate change, why do local conservation efforts still matter?
Or even maybe larger scale marine protected areas MPAs, which you call hope spots?
Why do they still matter?
Well, think about the phrase, the death of a thousand cuts.
That's what we have been doing mostly.
The greatest pain that we have inflicted on the planet has taken place in the last 200 years or so.
When 1800, our numbers were only about one billion.
Now we're eight times that number.
We still have half the life that was in the sea when I was a child.
It's still there, but we've lost a half.
Wow.
And we're on a trajectory now to keep going in that direction.
So the idea of inspiring people to make commitments, to take whatever place that they care about.
It can be a small place like Fish Rock in Western Australia.
And it can be really large, like the Sargasso Sea, which occupies a fair chunk of the high seas beyond the jurisdiction of countries.
But whatever it is, if you get people to care and take action.
Knowing leads to caring leads to doing something.
Hope spots are places that started out logical places.
Who would not wish to save the Galapagos Islands, the waters around the Galapagos Islands?
The waters around Antarctica, that special continent that people came together at the height of the Cold War.
Nations agreed to protect it, to keep it safe.
We need to do that all over the world to have safe places, a network of hope leading to action, so that we can have a thousand, ten thousand, whatever it takes.
The high seas, that's half of the world.
Beyond national jurisdiction, that's the global commons.
Why wouldn't we wish to protect the blue heart of the planet?
It keeps us alive.
We need to keep the ocean alive.
You mentioned in your talk that you're using AI to help gather information about hope spots.
It's another part of the 21st century.
It's just the logical progression that we now can weave together information that has been here and there in various silos.
We're still the ones who should be making the decisions, and we should be wary of one really important thing.
When you think about how much about the ocean do we know?
We know more than anyone has ever known before.
But the number of people who have actually been in the ocean to witness what's there.
In the amount that has been seen by anybody, it's a tiny little piece of our principle knowledge.
Life support system.
So we're just beginning to ask the right questions.
And as we learn and put it into the database, we can just have an opportunity for the first time to wrap our minds around.
This is how the world works.
And this is what we've been doing that is causing harm to the systems that make Earth habitable.
We have created this, what we call sometimes this sixth extinction.
There have been five times in the history of the Earth when things not because of us, but because of natural phenomenon Earth has gone through rapid change.
And here we are, we are the agents of change, creating the six great laws of life on the planet.
So far we have a planet that kind of works in our favor.
But we're pushing the edge, the boundaries of what keeps us safe.
Think about changes in temperature.
Changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere, changes in the chemistry of the ocean.
This is not great news.
So, next ten years, maybe the next five years, maybe right now, what are you doing this afternoon?
Why not start right now to do whatever you can, armed with knowledge? that nobody had before.
So the work you're doing is a family affair.
You have mentioned that your daughter and her husband are helping you tell the story and get into the tech of spraying.
They build submarines.
They build equipment to explore and understand the ocean.
Now, just imagine, think about this.
What would we know about the world if aviation had never gotten off the ground?
We would know far less.
And we're just getting off the ground in the other direction in the 21st century.
Yeah, talk a little bit about what you all are doing together.
Solving the problems of exploring the ocean and trying to document what's there and then move action to take care of it.
Right now, while we're sitting here, tons of ocean wildlife are being extracted from the ocean on a scale of That until the middle of the 20th century and since has never been possible before.
Technology cuts both ways.
We have the benefits of technology for communication, for all the health benefits advantages that we enjoy.
But think of how we use technology to destroy.
I mean, think about war.
Think of guns that have never been invented.
For example, or if we'd never taken the technology to turn against ourselves.
I don't know of another species that so aggressively goes after their own kind.
I mean, really to try to exterminate.
Other humans.
The idea that we use the most powerful technology ever developed to wage war.
We need to reach peace.
We need to take that knowledge and we do to go high in the sky, to go deep in the ocean and to communicate as widely as possible what we now know and use it so that we can secure an enduring place for ourselves.
The great thing that is saving us right now is the resilience of nature.
If it didn't exist, we would be long gone.
We would have taken enough out of the system so that it would have crashed long ago.
This is a secret for our success, to recognize that life is a dynamic process and it's fragile.
It seems like we're here forever.
Consider dinosaurs probably thought the same thing, but they did not have a choice.
We have a choice, and it's now.
It doesn't look really good right now if you look at the evidence, but we still have the last best chance.
We will ever have to really understand where we fit in, make peace with nature, maybe even among ourselves.
If you had to give your average person one small change in their lifestyle that might make the biggest, most meaningful impact for their effort in order to help the ocean, what would it be?
There's one piece of equipment that I would suggest.
It's called the mirror.
Look in it.
Ask the question, who am I?
What have I got?
There's nobody else who's ever lived who's like I am.
I have superpower.
I am different.
And I ask that you identify what that is.
What have you got?
That's my question.
Do you have a way with music?
Do you have a way with numbers?
Do you have a way with words or with kids?
Nobody can do everything that needs to be done, but everybody can take what they've got and do something.
And sometimes it's like a little girl walking the beaches in Texas, being disgusted by all the junk on the beach.
Nobody asked her.
She just started picking it up.
And people saw this little kid out there picking up the trash and first one and then another and...
There are people out there helping to pick up the trash.
It seems like a very mundane thing, but it makes a difference.
Imagine if everybody stopped throwing the trash in the first place.
Garbage, trash, waste, that's a human concept.
In nature, there is no excess.
Think of whales cruising the ocean, munching on squid or fish or krill, and they of course put nutrients back in the sea.
Well, it's not waste.
It's like delicious food fertilizer for the phytoplankton that capture carbon dioxide and generates oxygen and food.
It's a circle that goes round and round and round and it's really complicated.
And we haven't yet wrapped our little minds around how complicated it is.
We still think that as the bosses of the world, we can do whatever we like.
Everything that's here is here for us to do capitalize on its existence, and if we can't, then it's not useful.
And so we tend to think of it as not important.
We have bycatch in fishing that when you drag a net across the sea floor to catch something you want to sell or eat, A lot of other creatures die.
But if we don't have a place to market them, we don't care.
We don't think that the forest matters more than planting something that will give us a financial return.
We just have this mindset.
Instead of respecting nature, thank you nature, you keep us alive.
And by that I mean the millions of other creatures, the microbes, the fungi, the animals, the plants, all of the diversity of life.
We haven't begun to figure out the role of each and every one of them in creating this magical place we call home.
Sylvia Earle, before we wrap, because you know so much about the oceans, would you share a wild or particularly fascinating deep sea fact with us?
Oh, my goodness.
I suppose.
What is exciting about exploring the ocean?
You never know what you're going to see or who is going to be there.
Looking back with amazement at us.
We embrace going to space and we are, and should be, in awe of what we're learning, not just within our own solar system, but the universe beyond.
But it's that universe beneath the surface of the ocean.
I'll give you one example offshore from Hawaii in a little one-person submarine coming back from a dive.
I'd been out there for about four hours exploring and coming back. ready to go back to the surface.
The storm was brewing, so they were a little bit edgy.
They wanted me to hurry up, come back.
But just as I was about to lift off the bottom, I saw what I thought at first was like a big bag full of trash.
And I turned and looked, and then I saw it had eyes.
At first I thought it was a giant squid.
I'd never seen one.
Nobody had seen one at that time.
But it was an octopus.
Oh, wow.
Bigger than I am.
Incredible.
They're just incredible creatures.
Looking at me.
And so I called up to the surface and said, there's an octopus here.
Just give me a chance at this stage.
I'll hurry back.
So we're putting tapes into it.
We didn't have the digital cards at that point.
But I turned the camera and I just filmed, and filmed, and filmed, and then I realized I forgot to put the tape in.
Oh, no.
I didn't have anything except what I had in my head.
Wow.
But again, I pleaded with it on the surface, please, I've got to stop.
So they gave me a little bit more time, even though the waves were getting higher and the wind was blowing harder, but they listened to my appeal.
And so I did get a little bit of footage of this.
Wow.
Amazing red octopus that had never been seen in Hawaiian waters before.
And as far as we know, I did not bring back a sample.
She lives in peace.
But I saw she had a cluster of eggs that she was holding.
They tend to have short lives.
I'm not sure that that applies to all octopuses, but probably this one because, after floating around in the ocean, swimming around with this clutch of eggs,
The little ones hatch and she goes on to become part of the ocean.
Wow.
It's the transition.
No waste.
Just part of how the world works.
It was a beginning and an end.
And it did get back to the surface.
Well, we're so glad that you did because then you could sit down with us.
Sylvia Earle, her deepness.
Thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Oh, thank you for having me here.
Everybody should listen up and dive in.
That was Sylvia Earle at TED 2026 and in conversation with me, Elise Hume.
If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines.
And that's it for today.
TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED.
And the interview was recorded in Vancouver by Dave Palmer and Rich Amies.
The TED Talks daily team includes...
Learn more at podcasts.ted.com.
I am Elise Hu.
I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
