Q24 - Critics of a plan to create new building sites

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Explain/Resolve or Strengthen (fill in the blank, and blank is prefaced with "Nevertheless ….. because")

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Building on this 5m submerged land would NOT reduce the habitat area for local dolphins.
Counterevidence: The dolphins currently living in this area are surrounded by land in one direction and unacceptably deep water everywhere else.

Answer Anticipation:
We don't have any premise yet, so there's no reasoning to explore. That's why it's more like Explain/Resolve.

We would think,
GIVEN THAT the dolphins are stuck in this zone between land and unacceptably deep water
HOW COULD IT BE THAT building on some of this land that's under 5m of water would NOT be reducing the dolphins' habitat?

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is irrelevant. We're trying to analyze whether habitat would be reduced or not. This is about whether it's currently AMPLE or not.

(B) YES! If dolphins would never go as shallow as 5m, then using the 5m part of this habitat area is not reducing their habitat at all.

(C) This seems irrelevant to assessing whether building on this land would reduce dolphin habitat.

(D) Avg depth isn't helping us to assess whether building here would reduce available habitat.

(E) We already knew that the water became unacceptably deep. Getting the specific depth doesn't change anything.

Takeaway/Pattern: Our most important first step is to import the borrowed language from the conclusion "the critics are mistaken". What did the critics say? "Building here will reduce habitat area for these dolphins". What is our author saying if she thinks that they're mistaken? "Building here will NOT reduce habitat area for these dolphins". We just need an answer choice that helps to convince us of that, and (B) makes it clear that the dolphins wouldn't have been interested in this 5m deep area in the first place.

#officialexplanation