Introduction
Human kind has been reaping the benefits of our planet’s various water sources since biblical times. Whether it has been with nets, spears, trolls, traps, hooks, seines, long lines, or any other practice, fishing technologies have been getting more and more advanced over time with the ultimate goal being quite simple: catch more fish. Although it may seem all good and well to pull as many fish as humanly possible out of the sea, in layman’s terms, it quite simply is not. The exponential advancement of fishing technologies throughout the course of history has led to the exhaustion of our waters’ resources, biodiversity, ecological health and ultimately the depletion of worldwide fish stocks. In this article our speaker aims to not only to prove his argument of fact that fishing technologies need to changed, but also educate his readers and call an industry to action. Through various appeals to pathos, logos, and mythos the speaker is able to engage with his readers on a more personal level and begin to justify his argument. Through the historical examination of fishing technologies in recreational practice, the attainment of sustenance and ultimately the rise of a frugal yet harmful industry, the speaker is able to effectively apply the Toulmin argument model and make many sufficient claims to warrant his argument.
Reader Appeals: Pathos
When presenting an argument an author will often try to appeal to their audience through the use of pathos, logos, and mythos. By engaging in these types of appeals a speaker can accomplish a variety of things; from tugging on a reader’s heartstrings to appealing to our deep rooted traditions, this strategy is one that almost never fails. In this article the speaker addresses all of these different audience appeals very effectively. Appeals to reader emotion through pathos to back an argument occur frequently throughout this article. One such example of this practice can be observed when the author discusses how marine mammals and other non commercial ocean species are often killed by modern tuna fishing techniques. Modern tuna netting practices often mistakenly capture all kinds of non-target marine life such as dolphins, turtles, sharks, baby whales, and other undesired fish populations. By including this information in the backing of his argument that fishing technology needs to be changed, the author is able to stir up some emotion is his reader as they picture popular and well loved marine animals like dolphins and sea turtles left dead and maimed in the giant fishing nets that caught the albacore tuna in the sandwich they just had for lunch. Still hungry?
Reader Appeals: Logos and Mythos
Appeals to his readers sense of logos are also used effectively in this article when the author discusses the issue of by-catch in fishing technologies. Logical claims to back the argument are woven seamlessly into this article in the form of statistics, facts, and examples. One such example is presented when the author states that in the Clarence River alone a two hundred and seventy ton catch of shrimp in the 1991-1992 season yielded a massive one hundred and twenty three tons of by-catch. Statistics such a these allow a reader to truly perpetuate the severity of a situation and see it logically in its most black and white form. In regards to mythos, appeals to our sense of all encompassing human culture and tradition are used by the author of this article to make us realize that the failure of ocean ecosystems and the fishing industry is a direct result of our long held natural human belief that the ocean’s resources are inexhaustible. Although this belief has been just recently proven wrong, by addressing it the author is able to point out just how bad of a situation our traditions have created and how a drastic change in our traditions will be needed to go hand in hand with changes in modern fishing technologies. The most apparent appeal to mythos in this article occurred