UPSC Prelims 2022 · CSAT (Paper 2) · Q1
Medium · Passage: inference from passage
Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.
A fishing community's annual catch has been falling for a decade even as the number of boats on the water has grown. Older fishers describe waters that once yielded a full net within an hour now taking most of a day. Marine biologists surveying the coast have found juvenile fish far more often than mature, spawning-age fish in recent years, a pattern rarely seen in the community's own records from earlier decades. Meanwhile, warmer coastal waters have pushed some commercially valuable species further from shore than local boats, built for near-shore trips, can reasonably follow.
Consider the following statements:
1. A rising number of boats is the sole cause of the falling annual catch.
2. The scarcity of mature, spawning-age fish suggests a decline in the population's ability to replenish itself.
3. Warming waters have made some valuable species less accessible to the local fleet's existing boats.
Which of the statements given above are correct?