The article I chose is “Exclusive: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Video of mating deep-sea anglerfish stuns biologists”, published in Science. It covers the discovery and reactions of scientists who happened upon a female fanfin anglerfish, which had a male freshly attached to her side. Deep sea anglerfish mate by having the male attach to the female with his mouth, and essentially he dissolves into her flesh, until only gonads remain. This was the first time a live male was found attached to a live female, with all other observations from dead female anglers, and this finding confirms many scientists’ theories on the behavior of the anglerfish.
The article began as a structured story, starting with the scientists first seeing the anglerfish, and explaining what an anglerfish is, and why seeing a live one with a mate is so important. The article then goes into the history of anglerfish research, and how the footage of this anglerfish was captured. It then went into the analysis done by other scientists, and their thoughts. At this point, the article loses the story-like structure, and dissolves into explanatory paragraphs of the differences between anglerfish sexes, more interviews with the scientists, and concludes with the diversity of anglerfish and hopeful future of deep sea exploration. The article is interesting. The footage used to begin it is beautiful and dynamic, with slow, panning, rotating shots of the female, and zoomed-in shots of the male. The story it puts together is one of wonder and mystique towards these tiny fish, and really pushes the importance of this never-before-seen behavior. The portion of the article with interviews from the scientists is the least interesting part, as the information is dry, and the scientists all state the same thing, that the anglerfish is amazing and it’s exciting to see. The information the article presents is accurate, as it is straight from the scientists who found the fish and analyzed the footage. This information, for the most part, is easy to read, but as mentioned previously, the interview portion is repetitive, and the information is not cohesively put together in that section. Otherwise, the article is easy to read and entertaining. I would most like to take the story-information blend that the author uses, as that would be most useful to “selling” the parks we will be observing. We need to be able to explain the aesthetic, environmental, and educational value of the parks, and by doing so in an easy to read and informative way, which will attract people to the physical locale. Link: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/exclusive-i-ve-never-seen-anything-it-video-mating-deep-sea-anglerfish-stuns-biologists
1 Comment
Jacob Fies
3/26/2018 04:59:26 pm
I really liked your point on having to "sell" the preserves that we are writing about. Much like we discussed in class, it is more than just presenting a bunch of information, and hoping the reader finds it interesting. It's about convincing them that whichever preserve they are looking at is the best possible one that they could go and explore, and they would be remiss not to. This is best done, much like you have outlined about this article, through the use of interesting facts and lack of heavy jargon. This will keep the reader interested, without being bogged down by too many terms.
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