Click here to view sample Task II, Task III, and Task IV

Direction to Students:

For this part of the test, you will listen to a report about how human contact and activities can destroy the marine life. Write a response based on the situation described below. You will also answer some multiple-choice questions about key ideas in the report. You will hear the lecture twice. You may take notes on the sheet provided at any time you wish during the readings.

The Situation:
You are asked to write a report for your science class on how human activities can actually damage or even destroy lives in nature. In your report, you're also asked to use specific references from the listening passage to illustrate your points.

Your task: Write an essay of 250 words or more about the influence of human activities on nature.

Guidelines:

• tell your audience how human activities can affect nature, and what could be done to avoid the negative effect of such activities.
• use accurate, specific evidence from the listening passage.
• organize your ideas in a logical and coherent manner
• use language that communicates ideas and information effectively
• follow the conventions of standard written English

Listening passage:

MOSS BEACH, Calif. - A third grader on a field trip to the tide pools here stuck her arm deep into the water and pulled up an 18-inch red point seaweed plant. She ran off, flailing the limp trophy as if she were flagging down the ice cream man.

Bob Breen grimaced. "That specimen was probably growing in that very spot for the past 10 years," said Breen, the supervising naturalist at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, which includes the tide pools.

For years, schoolchildren, sightseers and fishermen have had unlimited use of the flat-topped reefs, which are California's largest accessible reefs and can be easily reached by foot when exposed at low tide. But two years ago, biologists and visitors to the reserve noticed something was missing.

"We started to realize that sea life was disappearing where people walked," Breen said. Once the algae and seaweed were gone, so too went the hermit crabs, ribbon worms and eels.

Researchers were not sure if the vanishing sea life was part of a natural cycle or was caused by the encroachment of the more than 135,000 visitors who come each year to the 40 acres of protected lagoon, stretching from Pillar Point to Point Montara about 10 miles south of San Francisco. Many people pinch a souvenir or trample exposed life.

To tell whether people are responsible, biologists have cordoned off 100-square-yard sections of reef adjacent to the trampled plots. Naturalists will get on their hands and knees to count the plant and animal life in these protected areas, then compare those numbers to those found on the trampled plots. They hope to uncover a significant trend over the next five years.

"We want to discover if the marine life is disappearing because of human contact, and if so, how long will it take for it to regenerate," Breen said, adding that he has seen tremendous growth of algae in the cordoned-off sections since the program began eight months ago.

The tide pools created here twice a day by advancing and retreating waters are home to 700 types of seaweed and 50 species of slugs, and contain more than three-quarters of California's known gastropod - or shelled snail - species. There may be as many as 1,000 undocumented species living in the tide pools.

The shale reef probably had its beginnings as a mud flat in the Pliocene age, scientists say. Then millions of years of erosion of nearby sand banks and deposition of ocean sediment compacted into the rocky tide pools as they exist today.

Along with swamps and bogs, tide pools are considered to be the primordial pots where sea creatures evolved into land dwellers.

The importance of tide pool life is immeasurable to humans, said Dr. Ralph Larson, professor of marine biology at San Francisco State University and co-organizer of the Moss Beach study.

"You can compare it with the dwindling Amazon rain forest," he said. "There are many species in those pools, known and unknown, that may hold the next miracle cure. But once it's gone, it's gone."

One problem is that when algae and seaweed vanish, the habitat and breeding grounds for invertebrates go as well. Mollusks, mussels and crab die off, and their loss ripples up the food chain to fish, birds and sea mammals.

Breen said that if the tests point the finger at humans, then large parts of the reef may be made off-limits. "It's going to be the old preservation versus conservation argument," he said. "Californians love their environment, but if we let them have at it, there may be nothing left."

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