Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

Earle juxtaposes stark depletion (“ten percent… still remain”) with vivid, concrete survivals—blue whales, Antarctic krill, Chesapeake oysters, and coral reefs—to argue that the ocean is damaged but not beyond recovery. The accumulating examples function like a ledger of what is left, turning abstract conservation statistics into tangible living systems. Her image of reefs as a “jeweled belt” underscores both beauty and fragility, implying that what remains is precious and globally significant. The closing line—“There’s still time, but not a lot”—frames the quote as a call to urgent, practical action: the window for reversing ecological decline exists, but it is narrowing rapidly.