Great white sharks! Just hearing that name makes many people’s hair stand on end. In reality, these big fish have more to fear from us than we do from them. For many years, people killed countless great white sharks in the waters around the United States.
But thanks to conservation (保护) efforts, great whites are making a comeback in the U.S. Two recent studies show that the population of these sharks is rising along the east and west coast.
Why is the growing population of a killer fish something to celebrate? “When you fish too many of them, you start to lose balance in the environment,” says shark researcher Tobey Curtis. As the biggest killer, sharks help keep the populations of fish, seals, and other creatures they eat from growing too large.
In spite of their importance, great white sharks had long been hunted for their meat and their fins (鳍). Then, in 1997, the U.S. government passed a law that didn’t allow the hunting of great whites. Afterwards, the numbers of these sharks in the U.S. waters started to increase.
The law wasn’t the only thing that has helped great whites. Conservationists have also played a part in the sharks’ comeback. The research group OCEARCH is using a method called tagging (加标签) to help change people’s attitudes about great white. They let the public follow each shark as it travels the world’s oceans. OCEARCH also gives each tagged shark a name to help people form a closer connection with the big fish.
The group’s most well-known shark is named Katharine. She was tagged last year near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Since then, thousands of people have tracked Katharine’s movements on Twitter and the OCEARCH website.
This helps people see sharks in a new way. Chris Fischer, the founder of OCEARCH believes learning to appreciate great whites will encourage people to do more to protect them.
1．The underlined part “makes many people’s hair stand on end” in Paragraph 1 can best be replaced by______.
A. worries many people B. bores many people
C. frightens many people D. interests many people
2．The law passed in 1997 ______.
A. seemed very helpful
B. let scientists down
C. needed to be changed
D. made people like great whites
3．Katharine’s example is used to show that ______.
A. great whites are in fact lovely animals
B. the OCEARCH website has a lot of visitors
C. the number of great whites is growing quickly
D. OCEARCH help people get closer to great whites
4．The main purpose of the passage is to ______.
A. introduce an experiment result
B. make an advertisement for OCEARCH
C. remind us that big killers are dying out
D. inform us that great whites are making a comeback