Sailors Call It the Doldrums

My video is about ocean habitats and how they are being overtaken by garbage that humans carelessly leave around and how they are creating horrible and dangerous living environments for sea animals. I want to make my audience not only aware of what we are doing to these animals but I also want to make them feel guilty for what they’ve done. I do that by incorporating pictures of cute animals living in and trapped in garbage. For my argument to be effective, I’m making a warrant that people want to help save the environment and that they would feel bad for causing unnecessary suffering to animals. I’m assuming that the audience would be affected by the sheer amount of trash in the oceans to do something about it. My intended audience is people who care enough about the environment and the ethical treatment of animals to do something about the trash problem in our oceans.

I grouped my pictures into three sections. In the Pacific Ocean, there is a ring of plastic twice the size of Texas, which is what I mainly focused my video on. So I wanted to make an effect with the first 5 pictures by showing how much trash there is and how much area it covers. I chose the first image especially because from far away it doesn’t look like trash, just a mosaic, so as the video zooms in and more pictures are shown, it really shows how much trash there is. The last two pictures of that section I included because I wanted to show how the trash is also affecting people, not just animals, to persuade the audience to make a difference.  In the second section, I wanted to show how the trash isn’t just covering the surface; it’s sinking into the ocean and invading animal’s habitats. The first picture I chose because it shows the difficulty that animals would now have making their homes on the ocean floor. The rest of the pictures I chose because they were aesthetically pleasing and interesting (so they would draw in the audience) and they show how the trash is trapping animals inside and limiting their movement. I also wanted to choose really colorful pictures because they represented the lyrics “filled with colors the sea has never known,” meaning they're unnatural. The last section of pictures is where I really played on the audience’s emotions by directly showing how animals have been affected, tortured, and even killed by the trash. I chose pictures of helpless, innocent animals trapped in plastic bags or in the rings from soda cans. These pictures also don’t have as many bright colors as the sections before and I did this to show how devastating trash can be to animals and how dull their lives are with it. The pictures of turtles eating plastic are very effective because 1) it shows how they don’t have any other food to eat and 2) they don’t know the difference or that they’re eating trash. The pictures of turtles and birds trapped in plastic rings have a real emotional value, especially the turtles, because it shows how their bodies have been contorted by living in the trash. The picture of the whales, though it doesn’t show any trash, was taken near the Pacific Ocean and the whales were dying because of the trash in the ocean, so I used it for the shock value and background meaning. Then I end with a picture that both shows the amount of trash on beaches and one that also sends the message of my essay to protect the ocean and take care of excess trash.

I like my song. I stumbled upon it when I was looking up information about trash in oceans because it was actually written as a response to the trash gyre in the Pacific Ocean. Given that, the lyrics are so fitting and very insightful.  The song itself is very simple: just a guitar and voices. Her voice is so pure and the melody is very catchy, but sometimes she’s hard to understand. I plan for that to make the audience listen even closer. In the melody, she goes higher for a few notes and then goes back down into the low register which almost symbolizes waves in the water. The tone of my whole video is light and fantastic, as represented with the clouds, and the music represents that because you can almost picture someone singing it while floating or dreaming. It also creates lightness because there are only two instruments used and a clear, simple melody. It’s also a very heartfelt song, which I hope will make the audience see that I’m passionate about my topic and the impact I want the video to have. And the lyrics are phenomenal. That always helps.

The sailors call it the doldrums

‘Cuz there’s no wind here

Just a whole new trash frontier

Water blue as a gem stone

Filled with colors

The sea has never known

I want to take it back

All the dirty things I’ve done to you

Please let me trace my tracks

And wake up in the sapphire blue

Works Cited:

http://www.badlani.com/blog/2007/09/10/obesity-impotence-cancer-%E2%80%A6-still-want-to-use-plastic-bags/

http://www.grayareasymposium.org/blog/6355

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/chris-jordan-takes-shots-at-the-trash-patch.html

http://lindseyhoshaw.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/what-trash-looks-like-tangled-in-the-ocean/

http://feww.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/oil-exploration-tourist-boats-noise-kills-150-whales/

http://scurvytunes.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-nature-postcards-from-poseidon.html

http://gph171-tingey.blogspot.com/

http://lincolncityhotel.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/the-coho-monthly-september-edition/

http://animalnewyork.com/tag/trash/

http://www.greenerfootprints.com/plastic-bag-facts/

http://cltampa.com/dailyloaf/archives/2009/06/10/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-the-worlds-largest-dump-video

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/27019458

http://www.oceanday.net/2006.htm

http://www.marineinsight.com/marine/environment/what-is-the-pacific-ocean-garbage-patch/

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-slideshow.html

http://spectrumville.net/topic609.html

http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/photos/solutions.html

http://bigblueorb.wordpress.com/

http://blog.epromos.com/promo-news/la-to-join-bag-ban-club/

http://coastalcare.org/2009/11/plastic-pollution/

http://animalish.com/2011/animal-pictures/turtle-trapped-in-plastic-ring-cut-the-rings/