Read the passage below carefully and answer the question that follows.
For decades, coastal nations along the Gulf of Guinea have grappled with the dual pressures of unsustainable foreign industrial trawling and expanding domestic artisanal fishing. While foreign commercial fleets frequently deploy destructive bottom-trawling methods that decimate benthic habitats and harvest juvenile stock, domestic artisanal fishers, driven by demographic expansion and economic precarity, increasingly adopt fine-meshed monofilament nets to secure daily yields.
Regional maritime authorities have historically responded to declining fish stocks by enacting unilateral seasonal fishing closures and designating marine protected areas within sovereign territorial waters. However, these national regulatory interventions fundamentally fail to address the primary driver of marine depletion: the transboundary migration of pelagic species across porous maritime borders. Consequently, localized conservation mandates in one jurisdiction frequently trigger spatial fleet displacement, driving non-compliant vessels into neighboring unmonitored waters where regulatory oversight is virtually non-existent. Furthermore, state fiscal policies habitually prioritize short-term revenue generation from industrial foreign licensing fees over long-term ecological solvency, compounding the enforcement deficit.
Ultimately, achieving marine sustainability in the Gulf of Guinea necessitates transitioning away from fragmented national policing toward a harmonized, multi-state quota governance framework reinforced by real-time satellite surveillance. Without structural regional integration and targeted socio-economic support for vulnerable coastal communities, isolated regulatory measures will function merely as superficial palliatives against impending ecological collapse.
Which of the following statements best summarizes the central argument of the passage?
- Effective marine conservation in the Gulf of Guinea requires harmonized regional governance rather than uncoordinated national policies that fail to prevent transnational resource depletion.Answer
- BForeign industrial trawlers using destructive bottom-trawling techniques are the primary cause of habitat destruction and declining fish stocks in West Africa.
- CSeasonal fishing closures and marine protected areas have successfully eliminated non-compliant fishing activities across territorial borders.
- DCoastal nations must completely ban foreign licensing fees and immediately convert all artisanal fisheries into state-run commercial enterprises.