Single correct option
Write the paragraph that best summarises the passage below.
When a fishery collapses, the standard explanation is overfishing — too many boats chasing too few fish. This is usually true, but it is often only half the story. Warming waters can shift a fish stock's migratory range poleward or into deeper, cooler water, so that a fleet fishing the traditional grounds reports a collapse even while the stock survives, relocated beyond the fleet's usual reach. Distinguishing a genuine population collapse from a range shift matters enormously for policy: a fishing ban addresses the first cause but does nothing for the second, and in the second case may simply punish local fishers for a problem occurring hundreds of kilometres away.
When a fishery collapses, the standard explanation is overfishing — too many boats chasing too few fish. This is usually true, but it is often only half the story. Warming waters can shift a fish stock's migratory range poleward or into deeper, cooler water, so that a fleet fishing the traditional grounds reports a collapse even while the stock survives, relocated beyond the fleet's usual reach. Distinguishing a genuine population collapse from a range shift matters enormously for policy: a fishing ban addresses the first cause but does nothing for the second, and in the second case may simply punish local fishers for a problem occurring hundreds of kilometres away.
- A. Overfishing is the only real cause of fishery collapse and all other explanations are excuses.
- B. Apparent fishery collapses can result either from genuine overfishing or from stocks shifting range due to warming waters, and telling these two causes apart matters because the appropriate policy response differs.
- C. Fishing bans are always the correct policy response to any decline in fish catch.
- D. Warming waters have no measurable effect on where fish populations are found.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) Apparent fishery collapses can result either from genuine overfishing or from stocks shifting range due to warming waters, and telling these two causes apart matters because the appropriate policy response differs.
The passage presents two distinct causes of an apparent fishery collapse — genuine overfishing and range shifts from warming water — and stresses that distinguishing them 'matters enormously for policy' since a fishing ban only addresses the first. Option (b) captures this two-cause, policy-relevance structure; the others each collapse the passage into only one of its two causes or contradict it outright.
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