Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle grew up on a small farm in New Jersey and then on the Florida coast, where she spent her childhood in the water. She earned a place at university at sixteen, began diving with early equipment at seventeen, and wrote a doctorate on the seaweeds of the Gulf of Mexico that involved collecting more than twenty thousand specimens by hand. In the 1960s, as a young mother, she was often the only woman on research ships; on one expedition the newspaper headline read "Sylvia sails away with 70 men".

In 1970 she applied to the Tektite project, in which scientists lived for weeks in a habitat on the sea floor. Officials had not expected women and decided they could not share quarters with men, so she led a team of five women who spent two weeks living and working at fifteen metres off the Virgin Islands. She came up to a ticker-tape parade and a lifetime of being asked about hairdryers.

In 1979 she walked on the seabed off Oahu at a depth of 381 metres in a pressurised JIM suit, attached to a submersible only by a communication line. It is still the deepest untethered walk anyone has made. She went on to found companies building submersibles, served as chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and resigned to speak more freely.

In her seventies she founded Mission Blue, which designates Hope Spots, areas of ocean that need protection. She was still diving in her eighties.