I found this a tough one to deal with. Can someone explain the different answer choices.

Thanks in advance.

Premise I:- Tiger sharks are common in the waters surrounding Tenare Island. Usually tiger sharks feed on smaller sharks, but sometimes they have attacked tourists swimming and surfing at Tenare's beaches.

Conclusion of Premise I/Premise II:- This has hurt Tenare's tourism industry, which is second only to its fishing industry in annual revenues

Conclusion:- In order to help the economy, therefore, the mayor of the island has proposed an ongoing program to kill any tiger sharks within a mile of the beaches.

Assumption is that no negative impact will happen due to Mayor’s proposal further hurting economy.

So if we prove that a secondary negative effect will occur hurting the revenue then Mayor’s proposal will be weaken. In choice “D” by killing tiger shark, small shark will increase in population and inturn will hurt revenue by killing smaller fishes that are commercially important to the island's fisheries. So Choice “D” is correct.

hey guys:

forum rules = don't use image posting unless you need to use image posting (i.e., the problem contains diagrams or formulas that can't be rendered properly in the forum).

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--

please type the text of this problem into the forum thread, and then we'll answer it. thanks.

Hi Ron,
Apologies for posing the image. Find below the question in text format

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Tiger Sharks are common in the waters surrounding Tenare Island. Usually tiger sharks feed on smaller sharks, but sometimes they have attached tourists swimming and surfing at Tenare's beaches. This has hurt Tenare's tourism industry, which is secondary only to its fishing industry in annual revenues. In order to help the ecomony, therefore, the mayor of the island has proposed an ongoing program to kill any tiger sharks within a mile of the beaches.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly calls into question the likelihood that implementation of the mayor's proposal will have the desired consequence?

A) Even if not all the tiger sharks that come close to the beaches are killed, the existence of the program would reassure tourists.

B) Business owners who depend on tourism are willing to pay most of the cost of implementing the program.

C) Tourists come to Tenare Island for its beaches, even though the island features a number of other tourist attractions.

D) The small sharks on which tiger sharks prey feed on fish that are commercially important to the island's fisheries

E) Not all tourists who come to Tenare Island enjoy swimming or surfing.

here's the basic deal:
* economy has 2 main pillars: TOURISM and FISHING
* tiger sharks are hurting TOURISM
* mayor wants to help TOURISM by killing tiger sharks

if you want to weaken this argument, you want to show that killing the tiger sharks will have a deleterious effect on the other pillar of the economy - namely, FISHING. (note how much more obvious this is if you diagram the passage, as i've roughly done above).

choice d is correct, because it shows that, while killing tiger sharks may be good for TOURISM, it will be bad for FISHING (which, the passage asserts, is ultimately a more important industry).

wrong answers:
choice a has the opposite effect: it actually strengthens the mayor's policy, by assuring that there will be a positive effect even if the program is not carried out to the fullest.

choice b is neutral (transferring $ from businesses neither infuses $ into the economy nor removes $ from the economy).

choice c strengthens the policy, because it underscores the idea that the beaches are critical to the economy (and therefore that removal of the tiger sharks is of paramount importance)

choice e is irrelevant, because the non-beach tourists have no bearing on the issue either way.