The topic I have chosen to write for my paper was "A 10-year moratorium should be placed on commercial eel fishing to ensure the survival of this species". Before I started researching sources for this position paper, I wanted to identify which side I was arguing for. A lot of questions have been floating through my head as I was mainly thinking "what would happen to the ecosystem in NZ if these Eels had become extinct?" After learning a lot about the native NZ longfin eel, I fell in love and had found my position for this topic. SAVE THE EEL!
Researching and gathering information has been a very interesting and educating process. First off, I resorted to google. Google is great, I use it in my daily life so I have become quite addicted to "Googling" things. It had seemed that I had hit a road bump and most of the information I was finding was mostly targeted towards young children. Also, It is sometimes difficult to source the correct reference for some of these websites so I gave them a miss. After following the lessons, I decided the next step was to look in Google Scholar. There was a very minimal amount of suitable articles but I had found one that will be useful!
One man's name continuously came up when trying to find reports about the eels and commercial eel fishing. Dr Don Jellyman, He leads NIWAs research on freshwater fish and fisheries. So anything remotely relating to NZ native eels, he is probably involved. His research and reports became very valuable for my position paper as they contained a great amount of detail about why eels are disappearing and the history of commercial eel fishing.
There hasn't been many resources that oppose placing a 10-year moratorium, but through reading a lot of information about the eel and commercial eel fishing I have formed my own conclusion why once should not be placed and have used these informative resources to back up my opinion.
Just on an end note, look how enormous these creatures can get. Why would you want these to disappear?
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| http://www.longfineel.co.nz/tuna-news/large-longfins-found-in-selwyn-river/ |
4 comments:
First of all - thanks for the info about the drama club, I might pop along sometime. Secondly, I was glad to know that someone else picked their side of their topic as quickly as I did. I liked how you went through step by step of how you came to the conclusion of which side of the debate you're on. It was also nice to know that someone else too, used Google as their first point of reference. I always find it helpful to know what kind of information is out there before trying to sift through it all. It was interesting to find out the lack of resistance to the idea of the 10-year moratorium and I feel like this will help me understand your topic more as I continue to read your blogs.
I'm sorry, I don't think you will be able to join the noisy drama club, its generally for people that are 50+. Thank you for your insightful comment. I appreciate someone that has the same thought process as myself and we were both able to expand from google for this assignment.
I enjoyed reading about how you expanded your knowledge on researching a topic and also your process of forming an opinion on which side to be on. It was good to hear about you finding Dr Don Jellyman reports as they sound very helpful for your topic. I like the picture you added to the end of your blog, i never realized how big eels can get. Just looking at this picture makes me want to help save the eels.
I am glad that the picture at the end has encouraged you to want to help save the eels! Although it is a bit of an ugly fish. Its size and unusual beauty makes it a unique attraction to NZ fresh waters and we should do everything we can to help it thrive.
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