Listen to the following excerpt from an interview between an environmental journalist and Dr. Mateo Silva, lead researcher for the Xochimilco wetland restoration project:
Interviewer: "Welcome, Dr. Silva. Last month, your team concluded the third phase of the ecological remediation initiative in Xochimilco. While many local reports assumed that municipal budget cuts caused the postponement of the axolotl release into the primary canal, what was the actual factor that delayed the reintroduction?"
Dr. Silva: "While municipal budget adjustments did require two administrative revisions of our lab protocols, our funding was actually disbursed in full back in January. The true bottleneck took place in April, when unseasonable industrial runoff caused canal water salinity to spike 18 percent above the tolerable biological threshold. Consequently, we were forced to relocate the nursery population into secondary bio-filtration ponds for nine additional weeks until submerged macrophyte beds could restore the mineral balance, rather than proceeding with immediate reintroduction."
Interviewer: "And what confirmed that the secondary ponds had achieved biological stability?"
Dr. Silva: "It was not merely the stabilization of water pH, which occurred after four weeks, but the sustained 40 percent increase in micro-crustacean prey density observed over three consecutive sampling cycles."
Based on the interview transcript, what specific factor caused the research team to postpone the release of axolotls into the primary canal?
- AA delay in municipal funding disbursements that required administrative revisions to laboratory protocols
- An unseasonable spike in canal water salinity caused by industrial runoffCevap
- CThe inability of water pH levels to stabilize within the expected four-week window
- DA failure to achieve a 40 percent density increase in micro-crustacean prey populations