Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist who was born in the USA in 1935. She became interested in the world’s oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to stand on the beach for hours and look at the sea, wondering what it must be like under the surface. When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive, which motivated her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours under water and has led more than seventy ...

Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist who was born in the USA in 1935. She became interested in the world’s oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to stand on the beach for hours and look at the sea, wondering what it must be like under the surface.

When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive, which motivated her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours under water and has led more than seventy expeditions worldwide. She has also made the deepest dive ever, reaching a record – breaking depth of 381 metres.

In 1970, she became famous around the world when she became the captain of the first all-female team to live under water. The team spent two weeks in an underwater “house”. The research they carried out showed the damage that pollution was causing to marine life, and especially to coral reefs. Her team also studied the problem of overfishing. Fishing methods meant that people were catching too many fish, Earle warned, and many species were in danger of becoming extinct.

Since then, she has written several books and magazine articles in which she suggests ways of reducing the damage that is being done to the world’s oceans. One way, she believes, is to rely on fish farms for seafood, and reduce the amount of fishing that is done out at sea. Although she no longer eats seafood herself, she realizes the importance it plays in our diets. It would be wrong to tell people they should stop eating fish from the sea, she says, however, they need to reduce the impact they are having on the ocean’s supplies.