Earth's Last Frontier: The Sea海洋，地球最后的待開(kāi)發(fā)疆域
1. "We've all gone a little crazy about the outer space2 business," says Vice Admiral C.B. Momsen. "The ocean is the place where we should be putting our efforts in order to provide for future generations.''
1、“我們都對(duì)那些外太空的事情有些狂熱，”海軍上將C、B、Momsen說(shuō)，“為了供養(yǎng)子孫后代，海洋才是我們應(yīng)該投入努力的地方。”
2. Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface is covered by water. An observer, looking at the earth from another planet, would be likely to call it Oceanus. If all the continents and mountains were bulldozed flat, the earth would be covered by water more than 12,000 feet deep.
2、地球表面的百分之七十一被水覆蓋。一個(gè)觀測(cè)者從另一個(gè)行星看地球?qū)⒖赡芊Q(chēng)其為海洋之神。如果所有的大陸和山脈被推平，那么地球表面將被一層超過(guò)12000英尺深的水所覆蓋。
3. Sea and air are divided by a viscous curtain; beneath the curtain is an element weighing 800 times as much as air, utterly dark a few fathoms down, and with pressures that would pulp a man at 3,000 feet. Yet we know that many animals live in the deeps at pressures of 15,000 pounds per square inch.
3、海洋和空氣被一種粘性的“簾布”分開(kāi)，“簾布”之下是一種比空氣重800倍的成分，向下幾英嚼完全黑暗，在3000英尺深處的壓力會(huì)把人壓成醬。然而，我們知道很多動(dòng)物生活在每英寸15000磅壓力的深處。
4. As a life environment, the sea is a kind of land turned upside down. The sunlit pastures are at the top, where the water is saturated with tiny drifting vegetables, phytoplankton, and equally minute animals, zooplankton. The athletic animals come up to graze in this fertile prairie and become links in extensive food chains, formed roughly along the lines3 suggested by Shakespeare:
4、作為一個(gè)生命環(huán)境，海洋如同一塊倒轉(zhuǎn)過(guò)來(lái)的陸地。陽(yáng)光普照的牧場(chǎng)在上面，這里的海水中充滿(mǎn)著微小的漂浮植物，也就是浮游植物，以及同樣微小的動(dòng)物、即浮游動(dòng)物。運(yùn)動(dòng)的動(dòng)物從下層海水中游上來(lái)，到這塊肥沃的“牧場(chǎng)”上覓食，構(gòu)成了廣闊的食物鏈中的環(huán)節(jié)。這些大致如同莎士比亞的劇本臺(tái)詞中所說(shuō)：
5. "Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea."
5、“主人，我驚訝魚(yú)怎么在大海里生存�！�
6. "Why, as we do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones."
6、“為什么?如同我們陸地上的所做：大的總是吃小的�！�
7. The food chains extend to the abyss. The most amazing fact about this inverted life pyramid is that only 2% of the nutritive matter ends up in swimming fish. The rest falls to the invertebrates: pulsing jelly fish, darting shrimp, fixed colonies5 of coral polyps, and crawlers and diggers of the floor. There are about 30,000 known species of marine life, and marine biologists discover more than 100 new ones each year.
7、食物鏈一直延伸到深淵。最令人驚奇的事是這個(gè)反向倒轉(zhuǎn)的生命金字塔里僅僅2％的營(yíng)養(yǎng)物質(zhì)在游動(dòng)的魚(yú)嘴里終結(jié)。其余部分落入無(wú)脊椎動(dòng)物嘴中：脈動(dòng)式水母、刺蝦、珊瑚蟲(chóng)群、海底的爬行動(dòng)物和潛在泥中的動(dòng)物�，F(xiàn)在已經(jīng)知道的海洋生命大約有30000種，而且海洋生物學(xué)家們每年都會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)超過(guò)100種新的海洋物種。
8. One main branch of sea science, physical oceanography, holds enormous unanswered questions. The nature of the bottom, the circulation of the deep currents, and the chemistry of the water are poorly understood.
8、海洋科學(xué)的一個(gè)主要分枝，物理海洋學(xué)，有為數(shù)眾多的未解之題。（我們對(duì)）海底的自然生態(tài)、深海水流的循環(huán)，以及海水化學(xué)目前都知之甚少。
9. The Atlantic hydrographic chart is being revised continuously, and nuclear submarines are now charting the Arctic basin under the ice. Yet vast areas of the Pacific are unmapped and the Indian Ocean has hardly been touched. We know that several depressions in the floor are deeper than Mt. Everest is high, but we cannot be sure that we have found the deepest one.
9、大西洋水文圖在持續(xù)不斷地被修訂，核潛艇現(xiàn)在正在冰卞進(jìn)行北極海盆的測(cè)繪。然而，太平洋的大片海域還沒(méi)有海底地圖，印度洋甚至尚未被著手（測(cè)繪）。我們已經(jīng)知道有幾個(gè)海床坑處的深度高于珠穆朗瑪峰的高度，但是我們不能確定我們已經(jīng)找到了海底最深的地方。
10. Consider the abyssal valley called the Marianas Trench, lying west of Guam. In 1951, the British Challenger expedition sounded6 33,640 feet at one place in the trench. In 1957 the Soviet ship Vitiaz sounded 300 feet deeper at another place nearby, and later the Russian vessel found a spot 225 feet deeper than that.
10、留心一下位于關(guān)島西面的名叫馬利亞納海溝的深海谷地。1951年，英國(guó)挑戰(zhàn)者探險(xiǎn)隊(duì)測(cè)到海溝的一個(gè)地方有33640英尺深。1957年，蘇聯(lián)船Vitiaz號(hào)測(cè)到在附近的另一個(gè)地方比上處更深300英尺。其后，俄國(guó)船發(fā)現(xiàn)另一個(gè)地點(diǎn)比剛才那個(gè)還深225英尺。
11. The French navy has built an abyssal bathyscaphe to take three men to the floor of the Marianas Trench. It seems certain that no human observers will ever get closer to the core of the earth than these men. The world's deepest land shaft accessible to men is the Champion Reef gold mine in India, which is only 9,811 feet deep.
11、法國(guó)海軍已經(jīng)建造了一個(gè)深海潛水器，用來(lái)裝載三個(gè)人去到馬利亞納海溝的基底�？磥�(lái)很確定的是，不會(huì)再有任何其他觀測(cè)者能比這三個(gè)人更接近地球的核心。世界上最深的，人可以到達(dá)的陸基深井是在印度的Champion Reef金礦，深度僅僅9811英尺。
12. The depthmen will measure cosmic ray penetration of the sea, radioactivity, and the age of the water in the abyss. They may also make still and motion pictures of the trench, take water and sedimental temperatures, and perhaps sight no one knows what living creatures in that perpetual night. Serious scientists like Sir Alister Hardy of Oxford do not rule out the possibility that there are sea monsters to be discovered. A few years ago divers, working in a wreck under the Red Sea, several times sighted a wrasse 20 feet long. This is a common vegetarian species, never before found more than three feet long.
12、深入海底的人將在深海測(cè)量宇宙射線(xiàn)對(duì)海水的穿透力、放射性活動(dòng)，以及海水的年齡。他們還要對(duì)海溝攝像攝影，測(cè)量水和沉積物的溫度，也許還能觀測(cè)到那永恒黑夜下中不為人知的生物。像牛津大學(xué)的Alister Hardy先生—樣嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)目茖W(xué)家們沒(méi)有排除在那里海洋怪物被發(fā)現(xiàn)的可能性。幾年前，在紅海底一只沉船里工作的潛水員幾次看到一條20英尺長(zhǎng)的瀨魚(yú)。這是一種常見(jiàn)的草食的魚(yú)類(lèi)，以前從來(lái)沒(méi)有發(fā)現(xiàn)過(guò)有超過(guò)3英尺長(zhǎng)的（這種魚(yú)）。
13. The recent discovery of an eel larva many times the size of the common one may furnish a basis for stories of sea serpents. The mature eel has not been discovered, but it could possibly come in sea serpent dimensions.
13、最近“一條幼齡鰻魚(yú)其尺寸是普通鰻魚(yú)的很多倍”的發(fā)現(xiàn)，可能提供了“深海大毒蛇”故事的依據(jù)。成熟的此類(lèi)鰻魚(yú)還沒(méi)有被發(fā)現(xiàn)過(guò)，但是估計(jì)其尺寸很可能達(dá)到“深海大毒蛇”的水平。
14. One aspect of oceanography that has fallen into neglect is that of identifying fish: taxonomy. It is considered dull work to catalogue fish. One of the great taxonomists is J.L.B. Smith of South Africa, the discoverer of the fabulous coelacanth. This brute was brought up by fishermen off East Africa and aroused the curiosity of the curator of a provincial museum, who sent a sketch of it to Smith. He instantly identified it as a coelacanth, a species believed extinct for 60 million years. Somewhere in his files, Smith recalled seeing the animal as an empty fossil split from a rock.
14、海洋學(xué)的—個(gè)已經(jīng)被忽視的領(lǐng)域是“對(duì)魚(yú)進(jìn)行分類(lèi)鑒別”：分類(lèi)學(xué)。它被認(rèn)為是一種將魚(yú)進(jìn)行分門(mén)別類(lèi)的乏味的工作。南非的J、L、B、Smith是世界上最好的分類(lèi)學(xué)家之一，他是令人難以置信的腔棘魚(yú)的發(fā)現(xiàn)者。這種魚(yú)被漁民在東部非洲捕上來(lái)，隨即引起省立博物館館長(zhǎng)的好奇心，他寄給了Smith先生一份腔棘魚(yú)的素描圖。Smith先生立刻鑒別出它是腔棘魚(yú)，一種被認(rèn)為6000萬(wàn)年前已滅絕的物種。在他的文檔某處，Smith先生回憶道“這個(gè)動(dòng)物看上去像一個(gè)從巖石上剝離下來(lái)的化石”。
15. Almost everything we know or think we know—about the sea is open? at both ends. The questions themselves may be wrong, and many of the answers are under challenge. Take the theory of photosynthesis, which holds that the growth of all vegetation, and consequently of animals, depends on the action of the sun on carbon dioxide and water.
15、關(guān)于海洋，幾乎我們知道的一切，或者我們認(rèn)為已經(jīng)知道的一切問(wèn)題，其實(shí)在兩個(gè)方面都尚需考慮。這些問(wèn)題本身可能就是錯(cuò)誤的，同時(shí)，很多問(wèn)題的答案在面對(duì)置疑。拿“光合作用”理論來(lái)說(shuō)，這個(gè)理論認(rèn)為所有植物成長(zhǎng)、進(jìn)而乃至動(dòng)物，都依賴(lài)于太陽(yáng)對(duì)二氧化碳和水的作用。
16. A French zoologist, Professor Brouardel, has preliminary evidence that some marine animals of the abyss thrive in the blackness without any discernible action of photosynthesis. It will take him years of the most painstaking instrument building, campaigns at sea, and every conceivable cross-check to establish the doubt. Only if these negative results are valid will he be able to formulate the question: how do they live, if not by photosynthesis? Then the study can begin.
16、一個(gè)法國(guó)動(dòng)物學(xué)家Brouardel教授，獲得了初步的證據(jù)，證明某些深海海洋動(dòng)物在漆黑的、沒(méi)有任何可辨識(shí)的“光合作用”行為（的環(huán)境）下茁壯成長(zhǎng)。他將要花費(fèi)多年時(shí)間，從事最艱苦的設(shè)備制造、海中活動(dòng)、反復(fù)核對(duì)的工作，以確立這個(gè)（對(duì)光合作用理論的）“置疑”。只有當(dāng)這些否定的結(jié)論被確認(rèn)時(shí)他才能開(kāi)始闡述這個(gè)問(wèn)題：如果不是依賴(lài)“光合作用”，深海海洋動(dòng)物怎樣生存?之后，研究就會(huì)開(kāi)始。
17. Unable to see the underwater world until recently, oceanographers have relied on blind groping into the 'depths. They lowered nets, dredges, bathythermographs, still cameras, water bottles, coring pipes, and current meters. Today continuous recording instruments from a ship underway are able to bring up data from a long strip of the sea.
17、直到今天仍然不能看見(jiàn)這個(gè)水下世界，海洋學(xué)家必須依賴(lài)盲目地暗中摸索進(jìn)入深海。他們沉降下去網(wǎng)、挖掘機(jī)、深海溫度測(cè)量器、靜態(tài)照相機(jī)、水瓶、以及取心鉆管和測(cè)流計(jì)。今天，在長(zhǎng)途海上航行中，船載連續(xù)記錄設(shè)備能夠獲取數(shù)據(jù)。
18. Water itself is vital to the future of the race. Not too far in the future, science will crack the water atom for nuclear energy, and, before then, power will be coming from harnessing tides and thermal exchanges under water.
18、水本身就是人類(lèi)未來(lái)的至關(guān)重要的因素。在不太遠(yuǎn)的將來(lái)，科學(xué)將為了核能源而裂變水中的原子，在那之前，電力將來(lái)自水下潮汐繩索和水下熱交換（技術(shù)）。
19. The sea is the realm of inner space. It is our last frontier.
19、海洋是（我們的）內(nèi)部空間領(lǐng)域。它是我們最后的待開(kāi)發(fā)疆域。
