“We treat the natural world, historically, as our big larder,” oceanographer Sylvia Earle said in a recent interview with the Yale Environment 360 editor Fen Montaigne. “It's definitely not infinitely renewable.”

A record-setting deep-sea explorer with a Ph.D. from Duke University, Earle is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She now researches marine ecosystems with an eye toward exploration and the development and use of new technologies in the deep sea. Her interests in underwater technology stem from frustrations early in her scientific career, when equipment for deep-sea exploration was still in its infancy. A decade later, Earle helped found two companies that design vehicles for deep-sea exploration to aid in her quest to document and explore -- and ultimately preserve -- the unknown.

In her new book, The World is Blue, Earle reviews the damaging history of human impact on the world’s oceans and marine environments, and presents some ideas on how to improve conditions.

Find out more: 
E360 interview
National Geographic bio
New York Times profile
TED Talk

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Dee Boersma, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, is a conservation biologist and founder of the Penguin Project, now called the Penguin Sentinels. Boersma is also the executive editor of Conservation. 

Boersma wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Galapagos Penguins and how they have adapted to their unique island environment. Her current research explores the impact of environmental change on seabirds. She has temperate-zone research sites at Punta Tombo, Argentina, where she has researched since 1982, and throughout the South Atlantic.

At Punta Tombo, she studies a colony of Magellanic Penguins and the threats these endearing flightless birds face. “Penguins aren’t that different from people,” Boersma said in a recent interview with Claudia Dreifus of the New York Times. “They have to make a living, provide for their chicks and commute to find food. Walking upright and looking so well dressed probably helps us identify with them,” she said.

The Punta Tombo colony has declined in size by more than 20 percent in the last 22 years. Factors such as oil pollution and overharvesting of fish are major contributors to the decline, as is climate variation. Increased ocean-temperature variability often causes penguins to return to their breeding grounds later, in a poorer condition to breed.

Find out more: 
New York Times interview
Penguin Sentinels page
Penguin Sentinels interviews

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Julienne Stroeve, a geographer and glaciologist, received her Ph.D. in geography from the University of Colorado. Now a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, Stroeve studies the decline of the Arctic Sea ice cover, and how a seasonally ice-free Arctic will impact global climate. 

In a recent study in the journal The Cryosphere, Stroeve showed that in areas where summer sea ice has vanished, fall-season air temperatures have been 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, in part because the ocean absorbs far more heat than sea ice.

Arctic amplification -- the concept that the warming that takes place in the Arctic is greater than anywhere else on the planet -- is a big concern for Stroeve. “We have about 40 percent to 50 percent less of the Arctic Ocean surface area covered by ice now than what we used to have 40 or 50 years ago. That’s a significant drop,” said Stroeve in a recent interview with Yale Environment 360.

Find out more:
World Science Festival bio
E360 Interview

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Photo of Sylvia Earle (in diving gear) courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/ Department of Commerce/ OAR/ National Undersea Research Program.

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