The conclusion of the argument is that the government should therefore institute a program under which tissue samples from the dead birds are examined to determine the amount of toxins in the fish eaten by the birds.
Why? The fishing industry cannot be relied upon to help the government count the seabirds killed by net fishing because an accurate count might result in restriction of net fishing. If the government institutes the tissue sample program, the industry would have a reason to turn in the bird carcasses because the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins, which would--in turn--help the government with its count.
So the argument's reasoning is that implementing the tissue sample program will allow the government to rely on the fishing industry in their count of the seabirds killed by net fishing since the industry also has an incentive in helping, i.e. the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins.
Answer choice (B) states: "The fishing industry could learn whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins if only a few of the seabirds killed by the nets were examined."
So, if (B) were true, then the fishing industry could not be relied upon to help the government count the seabirds killed by net fishing since the incentive from the program, i.e. that the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins, would no longer hold because only a few of the seabirds killed by the nets need to be examined for the fishing industry to be able to learn whether the fish it catches are contaminated.
Thus, answer choice (B) most strongly indicates that the government program would not by itself provide an accurate count of the seabird killed by net fishing.
Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Julie-VJuly 17, 2019
Could someone kindly explain how we would eliminate answer choices A as well as C-E? Thank you!
