|Question 14Verbal

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Outi Tervo and team studied the effect of human-caused noise on narwhals ( ), arctic marine mammals that are sensitive to acoustic changes in their environment. Hypothesizing that elevated sound levels affect foraging among narwhals, Tervo’s team compared narwhal diving behaviors in natural sound conditions with those behaviors in two human-caused sound exposure conditions—ship sounds and ship sounds coupled with sonic pulses. Both exposure conditions resulted in significant decreases in the number and target depth of deep dives (associated with foraging) relative to natural conditions. However, differences between diving behaviors in the two exposure types were negligible, a finding that could be attributed to the fact that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
sonic pulses can be heard at significantly greater ocean depths than ship sounds can.
A
the narwhals weren’t as sensitive to human-caused sounds as the researchers had predicted.
B
ship sounds contribute so much to the overall sound level that the addition of sonic pulses has little effect on the narwhals’ auditory environment.
C
narwhals forage at shallower depths in the presence of ship sounds alone than in the presence of ship sounds coupled with sonic pulses.
D