Publication Name

The Sydney Morning Herald

Author(s)

Deborah Smith

When men were going to the moon, Sylvia Earle was leading the first team of female aquanauts to the bottom of the ocean, where they stayed for two weeks in a small laboratory.

The expedition - the first of nine times she has lived underwater - was a ''transformative'' experience for the marine biologist. ''I got to know individual fish. I saw where they slept, who they hung out with,'' she recalled yesterday.

Dubbed 'Her Deepness' by the US media, Dr. Earle had gone on her first expedition in a submersible two years earlier, in 1968, when she was four months pregnant.

…

At 76, after more than 7000 hours spent underwater, she still regularly plunges to the blue depths. ''As long as I breathe, I expect to dive.''

But she devotes much of her time to arguing for better protection of the world's oceans, from mining, overfishing, bottom trawling and pollution.

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Yet only slightly more than 1 per cent of the world's oceans were protected, she said. Today, Dr. Earle, who was brought here by the Pew Environment Group, will be in Canberra to address a parliamentary forum ahead of federal government decisions on protection of two marine regions: the south west of Australia and the Coral Sea. She said Australia had an historic opportunity to increase its marine reserves and protect the unique marine life.

''It is something that benefits everyone … forever,'' she said.

Read the full article, Her Deepness Drops in and Warns of Growing Threat to the Oceans on the Sydney Morning Herald website