全國2008年1月高等教育自學考試

英語閱讀（二）試題

課程代碼：00596

I. Reading Comprehension. (50 points, 2 points for each)

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five passages. Following each passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

Two decades ago, the channels that separate the Adriatic Islands were brimming with giant blue-fin tuna, a species so plentiful that tourists used to climb ladders by the sea to watch the schools swim by.

Today, these majestic predators are rarely, if ever, caught. The catches have dropped by 80 percent over the past few years, even for high-tech trawlers that now comb remote corners of the sea in search of the hard-to-find fish.

“This is past the alarm stage,” said Simon Cripps, director of the global marine program at the World Wildlife Fund. “We are seeing a complete collapse of the tuna population. It could disappear and never come back.” The group is urging the European Union to impose an immediate fishing moratorium until the international body that regulates tuna catches meets in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in November.

Many edible fish stocks in the Mediterranean and its extension, the Adriatic, have sharply declined in the past decade because of pollution and intensive fishing, including crayfish and John Dory, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In Croatia, much of the fish eaten at seaside resorts is imported from as far away as the United States.

But it is the blue-fin tuna that is in crisis, thanks to a new and lucrative European network of fishing and fish farming companies that provide the prized fish to sushi and sashimi markets in Japan. With tuna prices going as high as $15 a pound in Tokyo, European trawlers fish for tuna aggressively and illegally, far exceeding international quotas meant to protect the species, scientists said. Compounding the problem is the recent development of tuna fattening farms in Croatia, Spain, Turkey and other Mediterranean countries.

Now, even small juvenile tuna, captured in the few corners of the Mediterranean where the