000 HOURS, MORE THAN SEVEN MONTHS, UNDERWATER. FROM HER EARLIEST YEA...

6,000 hours, more than seven months, underwater. From her earliest years, Earle had anaffinity for marine life, and she took her first plunge into the open sea as a teenager. In theyears since then she has taken part in a number of landmark underwater projects, fromexploratory expeditions around the world to her celebrated “Jim dive” in 1978, which wasthe deepest solo dive ever made without cable connecting the diver to a support vessel at thesurface of the sea.Clothed in a Jim suit, a futuristic suit of plastic and metal armor, which was secured to amanned submarine, Sylvia Earle plunged vertically into the Pacific Ocean, at times at thespeed of 100 feet per minute. On reaching the ocean floor, she was released from thesubmarine and from that point her only connection to the sub was an 18-foot tether. For thenext 21⁄2 hours, Earle roamed the seabed taking notes, collecting 15 specimens, and plantinga U.S. flag. Consumed by a desire to descend deeper still, in 1981 she became involved inthe design and manufacture of 20 deep-sea submersibles, one of which took her to a depth of