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Information and IdeasVery hardSupporting a claim about ecological baseline shift

Information and Ideas practice question

Marine ecologists claim that 'shifting baseline syndrome' — each generation taking the depleted sea of its own childhood as the natural state — hides the true scale of long-term loss from the public. ____

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' claim?

  1. A. Each generation of fishers described the catches of their own youth as 'normal,' though those catches were a fraction of the generation before's.Correct
  2. B. Fish catches in the bay have declined steadily for ninety years.
  3. C. Older fishers used different gear than younger fishers.
  4. D. Scientific surveys of the bay began only in the 1970s.

Answer: A. Each generation of fishers described the catches of their own youth as 'normal,' though those catches were a fraction of the generation before's.

The claim is that each generation resets 'normal' to its own youth, hiding long declines; the interview pattern — every cohort calling its own diminished baseline normal — is that phenomenon observed directly.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. Fish catches in the bay have declined steadily for ninety years.
The decline itself is the background fact; the claim is about how perception conceals it.
C. Older fishers used different gear than younger fishers.
Gear differences explain catch sizes, not shifting judgments of normality.
D. Scientific surveys of the bay began only in the 1970s.
Late-starting surveys explain poor data, not generational perception.

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