Jaclyn LaTorre

Professor Ferarra

ENW 100

15 November 2019

Sylvia Earles’ Wish

Sylvia Earle’s Ted Talk, “My Wish: Protect our oceans” is an informative piece that

discusses that dire and urgent attention that our ocean’s require, which most people are ignorant

on. Her emotion-packed approach on persuading society’s members to be more aware of what

they are eating, purchasing and how they are affecting the oceans is very effective as her piece is

calling for action. She emphasizes her argument effectively, teaching the general public that the

oceans are a crucial aspect in their survival, by using ethos, logos and pathos, through a call to

action and sense of urgency with kairos accompanied with a passionate tone. Her use of barbaric

yet personal diction induces guilt effectively and allows for relatability in crafting need for

awareness in saving the life within the world’s oceans.

Immediately after introducing her reason for speaking, how by killing our oceans we are

also destroying our life as we know it today, she establishes her credibility. Earle uses ethos to

introduce herself as not only a marine biologist, but as simply a fellow member of society that is
worried about the air quality and one day having a fishless, and dead ocean. She states, “Fifty

years ago, when I began exploring the ocean [I never imagined that ocean would never be in the

current state it is in,]” (Earle, 00:00:03) By utilizing the phrase, “Fifty years ago” she is able to

display her vast knowledge and experience on this topic, making her a trustworthy and credible

source. She provides an example of the time she “...led a team of aquanauts living underwater for

weeks at a time,” (00:02:05), which shows that she is a trusted member of the science and marine

biology community. Similarly she states, “Since then, I've used about 30 kinds of submarines and

I've started three companies and a nonprofit foundation called Deep Search to design and build

systems to access the deep sea. I led a five-year National Geographic expedition, the Sustainable

Seas expeditions, using these little subs, ” (00:02:58). Once again, she is articulating some other

ventures she has pursued with her credentials in her own field, aside from just journeys and

knowledge she has acquired. Lastly, she establishes her reliability by elaborating upon her

contribution to major projects. She discloses that “[She] had the great pleasure of working with

the Googlers, with DOER Marine, with National Geographic, with dozens of the best institutions

and scientists around the world, ones that we could enlist, to put the ocean in Google

Earth,” (00:06:25) By providing all these facts about her past experiences, she is able to prove

that she is an expert on the topic which makes her speech more convincing and hence furthers
her purpose as a call to action and informative piece to the public while displaying how

passionate she is about her field.

Upon proving that she is in fact a credible source, she furthers her argument on why we

are destroying the ocean by tapping into her audience's emotions through relatability and pathos.

The first technique she uses is humor. While discussing her experience “using this personal

submersible called Jim [while she] was six miles offshore and 1,250 feet down,” (00:02:46) she

refers to the craft as “one of [her] favorite bathing suits,” (00:02:50). Here she using not only her

own logos to create a joke, she is able to make the audience laugh in a very serious conversation

that she presents to the audience. This is important because despite her great expertise in the

field, she is still approachable as she is still able to integrate humor into her argument. However,

one of her greatest tactics is pathos through realitibly. She creates this sense of fear, self-

awareness and shock by using personal diction with words such as “you” “us” and “we,” which

furthers her approachable nature as well. Earle states “The next time you dine on sushi -- or

sashimi, or swordfish steak, or shrimp cocktail, whatever wildlife you happen to enjoy from the

ocean -- think of the real cost,” (00:10:38) This idea of targeting the oblivious consumer in a

subtle way followed with more aggressive diction allows the crowd to feel guilt and sorrow as

they see that they are supporting the demolition of the ocean. She continues with “We kill using
long lines, with baited hooks every few feet that may stretch for 50 miles or more. Industrial

trawlers and draggers are scraping the sea floor like bulldozers, taking everything in their path,”

00:10:10). The use of the simile in this quotation allows her to create this monster like image in

the audience’s minds, to further her call to action. Similarly she states “Barbarically, we're killing

sharks for shark fin soup, undermining food chains that shape planetary chemistry and drive the

carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the oxygen cycle, the water cycle -- our life support

system,” (00:09:40). Once again she is using negatively connotated words such as “barbarically,”

“killing” and undermining” to indicate the severity and brutality of the situation, which

stimulates an upsetting emotion in the audience, making her argument more persuasive.

Accompanied with the fear, sadness, and guilt the audience may feel, the logos, or facts

and statistics Earle presents are very effective in driving her call to action. Earle states that:

“Ninety-seven percent of Earth's water is ocean. No blue, no green. If you think the

ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life

support system.

For every pound that goes to market, more than 10 pounds, even 100 pounds, may be

thrown away as bycatch,” (00:03:59).

This quote through his abrupt syntax, works well with pathos to instill fear in the audience while

addressing the severity of the current state of the ocean. She is able to articulate why the ocean is

so crucial to the world and by overfishing it, the ocean is in a bad state. She follows the bycatch

with another shocking fact that, “90 percent of the big fish have been killed. Most of the turtles,

sharks, tunas and whales are way down in numbers,” (00:00:40). She uses this similar concept of

pathos and logos again when she states that we are overfishing and destroying the mystical

beauty of the ocean. She says “The high seas, where whales, tuna and dolphins travel -- the

largest, least protected [from fishing], ecosystem on Earth, filled with luminous creatures, living

in dark waters that average two miles deep. They flash, and sparkle, and glow with their own

living light,”(00:14:40)

Lastly, Earle uses kairos to drive her call to action and further her claim. She uses

emotion packed time sensitive details to show the importance the ocean has to society and why it

is up to aware people to help save it. For example, she declares that:

“There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around. But business as usual means

that in 50 years, there may be no coral reefs -- and no commercial fishing, because the

fish will simply be gone. Imagine the ocean without fish. Imagine what that means to

our life support system,” (00:11:42).

She indicates how time sensitive this issue is, and how it needs to be addressed quickly or the

ocean will lack life forms and the beauty it encloses today. If the problem is ignored the oceans

noted today, soon will just be large empty bodies of salty water. To drive her speech to a clincher

she uses Kairos in her final line as a final call to action. Here she states,

“You decide: how much of your heart do you want to protect? Whatever it is, a fraction of

one percent is not enough. My wish is a big wish, but if we can make it happen, it can truly

change the world, and help ensure the survival of what actually -- as it turns out -- is my favorite

species; that would be us. For the children of today, for tomorrow's child: as never again, now is

the time,” (00:16:56). This final line by using personal diction, and the idea of doing it so that

future generations can know and use the ocean, is an extreme concept that reveals not only how

time sensitive it is but reveals how barbaric and selfish humanity has been.

In conclusion, Sylvia Earle is effective in delivering her speech on protecting the ocean’s

biodiversity and calling for action in order to stop pollution and overfishing a deprived and dying

ocean. She is effective because she utilizes her past experiences and knowledge to establish her

expertise and authority on the topic. She also relies on aggressive and personal decision in words

such as “we” and “barbaric” to make the general public, her audience, feel shock, guilt, and

sadness, and further promote them to take action. Earle uses logos and and kairos to present
shocking statistics that suggests if action is not taken soon, the ocean will be completed fished

and empty.