Sylvia Earle, who may know the ocean as well as any human being now alive, helps us cut that intimidating vastness down to size. She does it in two ways, both amply illustrated in this new classic book. Her first method is to bring the ocean to full life-to remind us of the very nearly infinite abundance of things that live there, some of them things that only a few people besides her have ever laid eyes on...Earle, though a great scientist, is also the heir to Jacques Cousteau, inducting the landbound among us into the mysteries of the sea, helping us to feel both astonished and at ease. But there's another, much darker, way in which Sylvia Earle helps us understand the size of the ocean. And that's to point out that, vast as it is, it's not so big that we can't screw it up...Sylvia Earle's passionate life-including this powerful volume-calls us to that work. But we've got to respond. Brilliant and committed as she is, Sylvia Earle is not going to save the oceans on her own. They're too big. But all of us dwell near the sea, even if we live a thousand miles inland-the sea falls from the sky when it rains; every drop of water we use eventually finds its way into the ocean. It is therefore our duty, and also our delight, to take on this defining challenge of our time.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Sylvia Earle, who may know the ocean as well as any human being now alive, helps us cut that intimidating vastness down to size. She does it in two ways, both amply illustrated in this new classic book. Her first method is to bring the ocean to full life-to remind us of the very nearly infinite abundance of things that live there, some of them things that only a few people besides her have ever laid eyes on...Earle, though a great scientist, is also the heir to Jacques Cousteau, inducting the landbound among us into the mysteries of the sea, helping us to feel both astonished and at ease. But there's another, much darker, way in which Sylvia Earle helps us understand the size of the ocean. And that's to point out that, vast as it is, it's not so big that we can't screw it up...Sylvia Earle's passionate life-including this powerful volume-calls us to that work. But we've got to respond. Brilliant and committed as she is, Sylvia Earle is not going to save the oceans on her own. They're too big. But all of us dwell near the sea, even if we live a thousand miles inland-the sea falls from the sky when it rains; every drop of water we use eventually finds its way into the ocean. It is therefore our duty, and also our delight, to take on this defining challenge of our time." in the context of "Bill McKibben The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One (2009)
• Wikicommons: -inline" to mean that wisdom is timeless.