Hello, it's Chris Anderson here, and you're about to hear a talk from the legendary marine

biologist Sylvia Earle. She gave this talk 10 years ago when we awarded her the TED Prize to

support her mission to conserve the ocean. The talk is super informative, super inspiring. So Sylvia

is now 83, and it was an amazing treat to sit down with her for an extended conversation for my podcast, The TED Interview.

We discuss her lifelong love affair with the ocean, and how something so vast and so awe-inspiring became so endangered, and what we can still do to save it.

So after hearing this talk, do come check out

the TED interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. 50 years ago, when I began

exploring the ocean, no one, not Jacques Perrin, not Jacques Cousteau, or Rachel Carson, imagined that we could do anything

to harm the ocean by what we put into it or what we took out of it.

It seemed at that time to be a sea of Eden, but now we know, and we are now facing paradise

lost.

I want to share with you my personal view of changes in the sea that

affect all of us and to consider why it matters that in 50 years we've lost, actually we've

taken, we've eaten more than 90% of the big fish in the sea, why you should care that nearly

half of the coral reefs have disappeared,

why a mysterious depletion of oxygen in large areas of the Pacific

should concern not only the creatures that are dying,

but it really should concern you.

It does concern you as well.

I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls tomorrow's child,

asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time.

Well, now is that time. I hope for your help to explore

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