Minuscule fishing lines leave whales wrecked during travel
Right whales struggle to following migratory patterns without being lacerated or maimed by rope
The author of the article, Sarah Schweitzer, presents the conflicting issue of risking the human fishing economy for the safety of maritime creatures. Whales, specifically right whales that the story focuses on, get caught in fishing and lobster traps along the east coast time and time again. Fishing regulators are caught between tightening the rules so much that fishermen cannot pay for the materials and therefore ruining the northeastern fishing economy, or allowing innocent creatures migrating through the ocean to get tormented by waters that man claims.
To illustrate both sides of the issue, the author broke the article into chapters. One chapter would tell of the present day and the opinions and accounts of the person being profiled in the article, marine biologist and doctor, Michael Moore. A following section would talk about two right whales in particular, Picasso and her daughter Bayla, and speculations of what they would be doing at a particular time in their migratory patterns. The chapter of the whales would tell the story from theoretically what their perspective would be, and how they get the scores and marks on their bodies that present day Moore sees on their tails while they are being tracked. The article will also demonstrate the point of view of the fishermen along the northeast coast and their difficulties adapting to new regulations that attempt to keep whales out of harm’s way.
The story is told with an anecdotal style. The stories are all accounts from the person being profiled, or accounts that that person has heard. The story is told in a fluid style, rather than crisp and to the point. Without the personalized style, it would be harder to make the reader relate to the subject matter.
There is no one specific nut graph, rather there are multiple chapters of the story, and each will have specific details regarding that chapter. The first section and the last section of the article brings the story full circle. The two paragraphs that stand out as the most prominent sections of the nut graph are in the first and last sections. These paragraphs highlight the important details, such as the line, “In a hotel room in New Smyrna, Moore and the fleet of biologists from across Florida, Georgia, and Massachusetts reviewed the details of the operation. The meeting went long and sleep was short, but the next morning, Moore’s mind whirred with possibility as the radio of the overhead airplane reported Bayla was surfacing.” The following section of the nut graph can be found in the last section, where the story is brought full circle and we are back to the present day challenge that Moore is facing, “Moore braced himself against the steel of the Zodiac’s platform tower as the boat closed in on the whale in the heaving Florida waters. Through the rangefinder, he could see the tangled mass of ropes cinched tightly around her. It was impossible to tell where the ropes began and where they ended.”
The author will employ long, descriptive paragraphs, stuffed full of detail. When describing Moore, he highlighted the key points in one paragraph to sum up Moore in that moment in time to the reader. On other occasions, short punctual sentences will be used for stronger emphasis on a fact or statement. Two great example of these strongly emphasized short sentences are, “It was a grimly convenient attribute that, legend has it, afforded them their name. They were the right whale to kill.” and, “On a single day in January of 1700, colonists killed 29 right whales off the Cape.”
The authors writing also does an excellent job at presenting both sides of a conflicting argument. An example is, “He was a marine biologist. Getting exercised about animal pain was dangerous terrain; in the scientific community he could be derided as emotional and unempirical.”