Sylvia Alice Earle was born in Gibbstown, New Jersey. Her parents were nature lovers and encouraged her interest in the natural world and exploring the nearby woods. At 12, the family moved to Dunedin, Florida, by the waterfront, and she became fascinated by the seagrass beds and salt marshes.
In 1952, at 17, after receiving an associate degree from St. Petersburg Jr. College, she went to study Botany at Florida State University and learned to dive with SCUBA gear. She continued her education at Duke University, writing her thesis on algae in the Gulf of Mexico, and received her Doctorate of Phycology (the scientific study of algae) in 1966.
In 1965, at 30, Earle began her lifelong research career when accepting a position as Cape Haze Marine Laboratories resident director in Sarasota, Florida. Two years later, she became a research fellow at the Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University and joined the Radcliffe Institute as a research scholar. In one of her research dives in 1968, Earle discovered undersea dunes off the Bahamas coast.
In 1970, 35 years old Earle led the first all-female team of aquanauts as part of the Tektite II experiment – an underwater housing and laboratory about 50 feet (15 meters) below the surface of Great Lameshur Bay off the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Throughout the two-week experiment, she documented the impacts of pollution on coral reefs.
It was the first of many undersea researches Earle led over her career, which included expeditions to China, the Bahamas, and the Galapagos Islands. She began to work with the National Geographic Society, producing films and books on life in Earth’s oceans, and in 1979, was appointed curator of phycology at the California Academy of Sciences.
That year, at 44, Earle set a new world record for untethered diving by descending 1,250 feet (381 meters) into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wearing a JIM diving suit – a specialized apparatus designed to maintain internal pressure equivalent to 1 standard atmosphere.
In 1982, Earle and engineer Graham Hawkes, who later became her third husband, founded Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technology, a company that designs, supports, and operates piloted and robotic subsea systems. Within three years, they built the Deep Rover research submarine that can reach 3000 feet (914 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface.
In 1990, Earle left the company to serve as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first woman to serve in this position. During her post, she led numerous expeditions to research the environmental damage caused by Iraq’s demolition of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Persian Gulf War.
In 1992, she founded another marine technology company called Deep Ocean Exploration and Research. Over the following decades, Earle continued leading expeditions and setting more records as the first woman chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the first woman explorer in residence of the National Geographic Society.
In 2009, Earle received a million-dollar prize from TED. It enabled her to found Mission Blue, a non-profit organization advocating for exploring and protecting the ocean and working to establish Hope Spots (marine protected areas) worldwide. The organization’s goal is to achieve 30% ocean protection by 2030, and as of 2020, its created more than 120 Hope Spots.
Throughout her 60-year career, Earle has logged over 7,000 hours underwater, published over 150 scientific papers, and led over a hundred expeditions.
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