Unsupported. The researchers only consider the hypothetical effects of brevetoxin on dolphins. (Although they believe the toxin accumulated in fish, they don’t comment on how it might affect those fish.) Nothing in the passage suggests that they have any theories on how brevetoxin affects other animals.

Unsupported comparison. The researchers only consider a single P. brevis bloom: the one that occurred near where the dolphins died. They don’t give any indication of how toxic that bloom was compared with any other blooms. (The author makes reference to another area where blooms are common, but we’re only interested in what the research team’s explanation supports. And their explanation doesn’t consider the relative toxicity of different blooms.)

Unsupported generalization. The researchers’ explanation doesn’t tell us what’s usually the case. Their hypothesis is focused on explaining a single incident. Although they’ve associated bacterial infection with brevetoxin poisoning in this one incident, nothing in their explanation suggests whether this is typical or not.

Anti-supported. This says that PCB poisoning probably caused the dolphins’ emaciated (i.e., underweight and weak) state. But this gets the chain of cause and effect wrong. According to the researchers, brevetoxin poisoning—not PCB poisoning—was the underlying cause of emaciation.

Breaking it down, we know that the immediate cause of emaciation was that the dolphins were metabolizing (i.e., digesting) their own blubber. Why was this happening? We’re not told explicitly, but since the researchers think metabolizing their blubber led to their deaths, and yet they say brevetoxin was the true root cause of death, it’s strongly implied that they think brevetoxin is what caused the dolphins to metabolize their blubber. Putting it all together, brevetoxin caused them to metabolize their blubber, which caused both their emaciated state and PCB poisoning.

Strongly supported by the researchers’ explanation. According to that explanation, when the dolphins metabolized (i.e., digested) their blubber, the PCBs released “exacerbated their condition.” Since their condition was made worse specifically because PCBs were released from their blubber, we can infer that releasing PCBs can be more dangerous than leaving those pollutants stored in that blubber.