TOW #3- The Sunless Sea

Excerpt from The Sunless Sea by Rachel Carson (from A World of Ideas)

Rachel Carson received a master’s degree in zoology at Johns Hopkins University, and also studied marine biology at the Marine Biological Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. With this education, she wrote many magazine articles and books to educate people both in and out of the science community on Earth’s vastly unexplored oceans and the harm that pesticides cause, especially to sea life. Her audience is clear due to the fact that The Sunless Sea’s vocabulary is that which someone who has not extensively studied biology could understand, but that other scientists could still relate to through some scientific terms and examples. In the 1950s, while Watson and Crick were studying the structure of DNA, Carson was writing about marine life. In The Sunless Sea, Carson describes the depths of the sea, which are unknown to many people, even marine biologists. She depicts the wonder and excitement of the discoveries of new species, and the people responsible for several deep-sea expeditions. The main goal of this passage is to bring attention to the understudied ocean, and how there are is so much that humans are unaware of swimming in the seas. Appeals to ethos are made often in this essay. For example, “the British biologist Edward Forbes” (619) is quoted recounting his trip to an abyss in the ocean, as well as William Beebe (618), Johan Hjort (622), and Thor Heyerdahl (623). These appeals effectively prove Carson’s credibility further than simply her credentials, which are provided in A World of Ideas prior to her text, because these scientists have experienced the ocean firsthand. They know what it is like to be on boats and in submarines, studying the various creatures the ocean is home to. Without quotes and information from and about these biologists, Carson’s argument would be weaker due to the absence of first-hand accounts.