Sylvia Earle: ‘We are on the brink – a million species may be lost’

Sylvia Earle: ‘We don’t know enough about the ocean to say how many species have been lost … But we do know that we’re good at eliminating whole ecosystems.’ Photograph: CPAWS

The renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has urged a global gathering of marine experts to rein in industrial overfishing that threatens hundreds of species with extinction and to rethink our relationship with the oceans, calling on humanity to “do unto fish as you would have them do unto you”.

In an interview with the Guardian at the Fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (Impac5) in Vancouver, the American marine biologist and first female head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says intensive factory fishing is treating marine species the same as farmed livestock, despite being very different.