Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Mangroves hold the line between land and sea. Their roots trap the sediment carried down by rivers and hold the shore in place against tides that would otherwise carry it away. The tangle of those roots is where the juveniles of a great many fish and prawn species shelter before they move into open water, so a fishery well offshore may depend on a strip of trees that no fisher ever visits. The same trees take the first force of a storm surge and drop what reaches the settlements behind them. The mud they stand in stores carbon at a rate few forests match.

Which one of the following statements best reflects the most logical and rational inference that can be drawn from the passage?