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【完形填空】Cloze: Coral Nursery
Mira pushed the tube into the coral frame and waited. Next to her, Dr. Ansel, a marine architect who had made himself the guardian of this underwater nursery, tapped his slate twice. The survey showed a 12 percent (1) in live tissue since March. "We used to count in square metres," he said, his voice unclear through the regulator. "Now we count fragments." It was 2019, and the reef off Pulau Sari had already lost half its coral cover to warming water, runoff, and a terrible bleaching event two summers before. Mira, a 27-year-old dive instructor who had become a conservation apprentice, had come to learn how a nursery (2). She had no idea she would stay for six years.
The nursery started as a small project: 40 frames, a charter boat, and a grant of 18,000 dollars from a Singapore foundation. Ansel's idea was simple. Coral fragments, when hung in clean water with steady current, grow faster than on a damaged reef; once they reach a good size, divers cement them onto bare rock. The method required patience, not glamour. For eight months, Mira's task was boring: scrub algae, replace zip ties, record temperature and salinity on waterproof leaflets. "You'll hate it by week three," Ansel warned. He was right. She also learned to (3) a habit of checking the coral's colour before her own buoyancy; a single careless knee could squash a year's growth. The work was, she admitted, a strange kind of healing.
Then the water turned warm. In 2021, a marine heatwave (4) temperatures past 31 degrees centigrade for eleven days in a row. The nursery's protective shade cloth, torn by a storm the month before, lay in a tangle on the sand. Mira and Ansel watched as the coral's bright pink (5) to a sickly cream. The damage was uneven, not uniform: some genotypes died within hours, others held on. Ansel's team, now a cooperative of nine volunteers, lost 62 percent of their stock. "I can avenge this," Mira said, half-joking, after a difficult dive. Ansel did not laugh. "You can't avenge a system," he replied. "You can only (6) your approach." The loss forced a rethink. The old model — plant, monitor, wait — had a hidden flaw: it assumed a stable ocean. It would not survive the next decade.
Mira went back to the mainland and enrolled in a two-year course on coral genetics. The terminology was dense, the statistics unforgiving. She learned to evaluate larval settlement rates, to (7) the genes that give heat tolerance, and to understand why generic restoration often fails. Her thesis project, a joint effort with a university lab, aimed to breed a hybrid able to (8) 32 degrees. Colleagues were doubtful; some called selective breeding a distraction. "It's a gamble," she told a conference in 2023. "But doing nothing is a bigger one." The data, though early (9), was impressive: the hybrid larvae survived at rates three times higher than wild spawn under heat stress. Ansel, who had become her mentor and occasional critic, called the results "a credible line of evidence, not a miracle."
By 2024, the nursery had moved. The new site lay next to a deeper channel, where upwelling brought cooler water and fewer dangers. The team, now 22 strong, had become a workforce of divers, boat captains, and data analysts. Mira, appointed managerial lead, discovered that regeneration is as much about people as polyps. She had to hire, train, and sometimes fire; she had to balance grants, shipments of cement and zip ties, and the constant awareness that every dollar spent on a boat engine was a dollar not spent on larvae. The reef responded slowly. In November, a survey recorded the first sign of natural spawning on a restored patch — three colonies, each the size of a dinner plate. Ansel sent her a one-line message: "We have proof." Mira cried in the office, then went back to the spreadsheet.
Not everything recovered. The southern edge of the barrier reef, once a spectrum of colour, remains largely bare; local fishers report smaller catches and a smell of decay in certain coves. Tourism has dropped; the dive shop Mira once worked for closed in 2022. She still dives there sometimes, alone, and finds herself cataloguing absences: no turtles, few groupers, an unsettling quiet. The ocean is not a patient receiver of our apologies. It (10) to what we actually do, not what we intend. One afternoon, floating over a frame she planted in 2019, Mira noticed a tiny fish — a damselfish, maybe two centimetres long — swimming between the branches.
Choices
(1) A. decrease B. decline C. drop D. fall
(2) A. works B. operates C. functions D. runs
(3) A. inculcate B. develop C. cultivate D. foster
(4) A. forced B. pushed C. drove D. made
(5) A. faded B. dulled C. weakened D. paled
(6) A. modify B. adapt C. adjust D. change
(7) A. locate B. pinpoint C. identify D. spot
(8) A. tolerate B. withstand C. bear D. stand
(9) A. primary B. preliminary C. early D. initial
(10) A. answers B. reacts C. responds D. replies