TPO 10 Integrated Writing Task

The reading and the lecture are both about declining in sea otters populations. The reading claims that chemical pollution is the main cause of the decline. However, the lecturer refutes this idea by mentioning that predators have had the main role in the decline of sea otters.

To begin with, the author notes that chemical pollution such as oil and industrial pollution are the main source of the decline. Moreover, the water explanation showed that the increase of industrial pollution was the reason for the decline in sea otters. In contrast, she feels that the pollution is weakened by the fact that there were no dead sea otters at the shore, and the predator hypothesis is more likely.

Secondly, the task posits that there was also declining in not only otters but also other mammals such as seals and sea lions. In addition, the writer mentions that orcas cannot have had an effect in declining of mammals because orcas prefer to have large prey such as whales. Conversely, the speaker believes that orcas were the exact reason in declining of other small mammals. Although orcas preferred to hunt other whales, whales were hunted by humans. So, orcas changed their diet to survive because there were just small mammals to eat.

Finally, the article states that at some parts of the coast, the decline was widely, and in other locations, the population was stable, and this is because of the uneven pattern of pollution. On the other hand, the lecturer opposes this idea by mentioning that the uneven pattern by pollution was not the reason of decline and uneven pattern by orcas was the reason. Additionally, because orcas are so large, they cannot go to shallow and rocky areas. Consequently, in some areas that orcas were not there, the decline did not occur.