填空题. Whales, several species of which face extinction, have become subjects of considerable sympathy. These are the recorded voices of whales. These monstrous creatures have been trumpeting their songs, one to another, in the world's oceans since the 11 of time, while overhead, great 12 and civilizations have come and gone. Now, their time of decline has come. It began a long time ago. Four-thousand-year-old rock carvings show that the people who lived in what is now Norway were probably the first to seek out and kill whales in the sea. By around 890 AD, 3,000 years later, the 13 had spread to the Basque people of France and Spain, who 14 whales from boats in the Bay of Biscay. In the centuries that followed, Whaling became an important industry in Denmark, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and, finally, in what would become America. Whaling went into dramatic 15 , beginning around 1900. Today, whales are hunted commercially only by Norway, Iceland and Japan. The world's 16 with them, however, is at an all-time high, because so few of them are left. Given their 17 history. Richard Ellis writes about whales, takes pictures of whales in the open sea, and 18 whales stranded on the beach. He says it's a 20-year 19 that began in the mid-1960s, when he designed a model of a great blue for the Museum of Natural History in New York. "As I began to do the research. I realized that nobody knew anything about whales. And I couldn't really find any pictures of what they looked like: all I could find was pictures of dead whales. And I became very excited at the prospect of doing what seemed to be original research on something that was so 20 , which was the largest animal that has ever lived on earth." A．beginning B．decline C．rise D．empires E．fascination F．different G．hunted H．dawn I．practice J．behavior K．peculiar L．sketches M．obsession N．tragic O．trapped