Fish Farming

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong: most6% picked this

   Most farmed fish are

   The overly precise modifier most is dangerous in Reading Comp (and on Necessary Assumption and Most Supported in LR). Can we get that precise? Do we know that more than 50% of farmed fish are carnivorous? The end of the 3rd paragraph mentions carnivorous fish that are farmed (such as salmon), but it never says that they're more than 50% of farmed fish.

   6%
2. B

   Too Strong: same Opposite, if anything8% picked this

   Farmed and wild fish consume the

   The concept same is very dangerous in Reading Comp (and Necessary Assumption and Most Supported in LR). If we said the word "identical" instead, it would sound as extreme as it is. The passage actually suggests, in the 3rd paragraph, that farmed fish are eating some unnatural diet of vegetable matter that doesn't supply enough vitamins, so they add fish meal and fish oil (which would never be found in the wild) to the diet of the farmed fish.

   8%
3. C

   Unknown Comparison: more damaging6% picked this

   Pollution is currently more damaging to wild fish populations than

   We have no way to tally up all the damage points inflicted by pollution and all the damage points inflicted by overfishing and measure them against each other. And the passage never makes a comparative judgment about which one causes more damage overall.

   6%
4. D

   Correct78% picked this

   Market forces can either encourage or discourage overfishing of

   Why this is right

   When we say "X is either Y or Z" we mean that "at least one of Y and Z" is true about X. So technically you can support this being a true claim as long as you can support encourage or discourage. But they had in mind dual support, because the author was listing a lot of different pros and cons. In one way, farm fishing is good: The 2nd sentence of the final paragraph explains that as fish farming increases for salmon, there will be more salmon supply on the market, so the market price of salmon will go down, which will deter people who might otherwise have thought to invest in wild salmon fishing. Kathleen was thinking, "Is the big money in salmon fishing fleets?" and was thinking about investing her inheritance in that sector, until she looked into the numbers and saw that the profit margins were razor thin, now that fish farming has lowered the price consumers are expecting to pay for salmon. Because Kathleen decides to not invest in a fishing fleet, it "reduces fishing efforts", which allows wild fisheries to build back their population. Market forces discouraged Kathleen from overfishing ocean fisheries. In the final sentence of the passage, market forces encourage overfishing. Niche markets open up for wild-caught fish ... people go on anniversary dinners to eat their $500 / bowl of shark fin soup. The fact that rich people lust for the forbidden fruit of these wild caught fish means that economic incentives to go fishing for them remain: "causing their catch rates to remain high even as the production of viable formed substitutes has increased".

   Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   78%
5. E

   Too Optimistic2% picked this

   The market for wild-caught fish is likely to remain a

   When the author talks about the market for wild-caught fish in the last sentence, she doesn't sound optimistic, like "no worries ... the market is likely to remain small". Instead, she's saying "even these benefits may in the end be lost!" because of these niche markets. She isn't necessarily saying the market will become a medium sized one, but we have no touchable support for this optimism that it will remain small. The tone of this sentence is "PIVOT back into pessimism and alarm".

   2%