Ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, Janet Reno join Women's Hall of Fame

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. - Sylvia Earle fell into love with the ocean at age 3 when a big wave knocked her off her feet on the New Jersey shore in 1939.

Her childhood fascination with horseshoe crabs, starfish and tiny seaweed creatures deepened into an irresistible urge to submerge. Descending thousands of feet into the cold, dark abyss, she said, brought her face-to-face with the ''sparkle, flash and glow'' of a luminescent world that resembles ''a galaxy of living stars.''

''People say, 'When you're down there all by yourself, don't you feel lonely?' No way,'' she told The Associated Press this week. ''The ocean is like diving into the history of life. You're surrounded with it. In deep water all over the planet, it's a light show all the time.''

Underwater adventures opened Earle's eyes to the magnitude of human ignorance about this vast inner space, the source of all life on Earth, and safeguarding the seas has become her lifelong pursuit. ''We have neglected the oceans, and it has cost us dearly,'' she said.

On Saturday, the acclaimed marine biologist, author and co-founder of a company that builds deep submersibles was one of 19 women inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

The ceremony takes place annually in this upstate New York village where the first known women's rights convention was held in 1848. The Hall of Fame honors women who have made valuable contributions to society and to the progress and freedom of women.

Among the eight living honorees attending were Janet Reno, the first female U.S. attorney general; Leontine Kelly, the nation's first black female bishop in the African Methodist Church; and Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey, a medical researcher whose refusal to approve thalidomide in the 1960s averted the horror of birth deformities that had occurred among pregnant women who took the drug in Europe.

''When I see the people I'm with, when I look at the wall of the Hall of Fame, I'm very humbled and very honored to be here,'' Reno said Saturday.

During the induction ceremony, the attorney general encouraged people to use their ''energy and creativity... to give all the children of America a strong and positive future. If we can send people to the moon we can do that.''

Only one surviving honoree failed to make the ceremony - 91-year-old author Eudora Welty, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for ''The Optimist's Daughter.''

Earle, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence based in Oakland, Calif., and former chief scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has pioneered research on marine ecosystems and led more than 60 ocean expeditions. One dive off Japan in 1991 took her more than 2 miles down - ''deeper than the Titanic is resting.''

Even at 65, she fully expects someday to drop into the Marianas Trench near Guam, the ocean's deepest realm at 35,800 feet, where 8 tons of pressure is exerted per square inch. Two divers made it there in 1960 and ''nobody's been back since,'' she said with dismay.

It's hardly surprising that less than 5 percent of the ocean has been explored when NOAA spends a ''pathetic'' $14 million on underwater research programs - a sum dwarfed by NASA's $14 billion budget, Earle said.

Now that oceanographers have found that the deep ocean seems at least as rich in species as rain forests or coral reefs, the 21st century must become the mighty era of marine exploration that ''aviation and aerospace were for the 20th,'' she said.

From oil spills to deliberate offshore dumping of toxic waste to half a century of dedicated use of pesticides, all living systems now bear a toxic load new to the planet, and with fearful consequences, Earle said.

''The loss of creatures many of us knew as kids - it's happened not because climate has changed, not because the stars are out of alignment, it's because of actions of human beings,'' she said. ''We've finally reached a stage where we can no longer take nature for granted.''

Earle entreats people to ''reconnect with nature'' to begin to fathom the perils facing the planet's most vital natural resource.

''I suggest people go out and get their feet wet,'' she said. ''Take a child along. And if you're a child, take an adult with you, insist on it. You tend to care about what you love and you can't love it if you don't embrace it.

''We human beings have had an attitude largely that we're apart from nature when in fact we're totally dependent upon it.''

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Women's Hall of Fame: http://www.greatwomen.org/