hard · GRE Verbal

Two rival explanations account for the decline of a coastal fishery. **The first holds that overfishing by commercial fleets exhausted the stock; the second holds that a warming current drove the fish to cooler waters.** Records show that the decline accelerated sharply in the very years when commercial catch quotas were tightened and fleet activity fell to historic lows. **Since the collapse deepened precisely as fishing pressure eased, the overfishing account is the less plausible of the two.** In the argument, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

1. The first is the body of evidence on which the whole argument ultimately rests; the second is the conclusion that this evidence is said to support.
2. The first states the two competing hypotheses the argument weighs; the second is the conclusion favoring one hypothesis over the other.
3. The first is the conclusion the argument reaches about the fishery; the second restates that conclusion purely for emphasis.
4. The first lays out two competing hypotheses; the second is a piece of evidence that specifically tells against the warming-current hypothesis of the two.
5. The first introduces the two rival explanations for the decline; the second merely repeats the substance of the first, now recast in the form of a conclusion.

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