January Nonfiction Blog Post

January Nonfiction Blog Post

            This week, I read, “US use sea lions in terrorism fight” by the foreign staff of “The Telegraph” newspaper. The text was mainly about what the sea lions’ jobs are in the Navy and how they do their jobs. In the text, it says, “Animals are used instead of humans because they are at home in the water and perform best.” The text also says that sea lions can attack leg cuffs (hand cuffs that attach to your thigh) to intruders, help try to locate explosives in the water, and patrol harbors and attempt to stop enemy divers who try to sneak into “friendly waters undetected”. The text says that marine mammals have been used in American forces since the early 1960s, and were first used between 1970-71 in the Vietnam War at the US Army ammunition pier in Cam Ranh Bay. These details show what the sea lions do, how they do it, and a bit of backstory to better understand their roles in the Navy.

            The author wants readers to think that sea lions are useful for the protection of the Navy and of America. They don’t indicate that they want us to feel a certain way; they don’t include negative or very positive facts about marine mammal use in the Navy, so I’d say they want us to feel like they’re being used for a good purpose. The author uses really good quotes that inform the reader, but don’t have a clear bias behind them. This helps readers understand the text, but makes them form their own opinion, not based off of an opinion that could have been given in the text. For example, “When an intruder is identified, the animal locating the intruder would be provided with marking hardware to localize the intruder and interdiction hardware to enable apprehension of the intruder by security personnel. The Navy marine mammals would also participate in periodic training exercises.”  This gives the reader a good chunk of knowledge on how sea lions benefit the Navy, but it can be interpreted as a good or a bad thing.

            From this article I will take away the skill of including purposeful quotes that don’t sway my reader in an obvious direction. This is a good skill because you don’t want to enforce too much of your opinion on your readers, but you still want them to know more about your topic and to be able to understand it. Since now I know about marine mammals being used in US armed forces, I definitely have a different perspective on animal rights/cruelty. I think using animals to fight not the best possible solution, but I also think it’s better that they’re in their homes and natural environments rather than in a zoo, or even being killed. This article didn’t include any statistics of marine mammal casualties caused by working with the US armed forces, so I don’t know about that. However, that is one thing I would like to know more about. I’d also like to find out where and how they get the marine mammals to work with, if it’s from a zoo, aquarium, the wild, and endangered, etc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6653439/US-use-sea-lions-in-terrorism-fight.html