好英语网航线成为蓝鲸“死亡线”
MIRISSA, Sri Lanka — In early April, whale watchers off this country’s southern coast were greeted by a disturbing sight: the lifeless body of a 60-foot-long blue whale floating in the water about 12 miles offshore.
斯里兰卡美蕊沙 (Mirissa) ——4月初，观鲸者在该国南部近海水域目睹了惨痛的一幕：一头60英尺长的蓝鲸的死尸漂浮在距岸边约12英里的海面上。
The body was swelling rapidly, and suckerfish swarmed across its skin. Even more unsettling was the condition of its tail, which had been nearly severed from the body.
尸体快速肿胀，成群的䲟鱼在周围游弋。更惨的，还是蓝鲸的尾部，几乎已经完全从身体上斩断。
“It was very obviously from a ship’s propeller,” said Mazdak Radjainia, a structural biologist and underwater photographer from the University of Auckland in New Zealand who happened upon the whale. “It must have been a really cruel death, because it was such a massive injury.”
新西兰奥克兰大学的结构生物学家、水下摄影师马兹达克•卢达甲尼亚 (Mazdak Radjainia) 偶然发现了这具尸体。他说：“很明显，是船上的螺旋桨造成的。它一定死得很痛苦，伤口这么大。”
一具蓝鲸的死尸漂浮在斯里兰卡南部的近海海面。
Researchers say ship strikes are a leading cause of death among whales around the globe. Many that are killed are from endangered populations like blue whales that are barely holding on.
研究人员说，船只撞击是全球鲸鱼死亡的一个主要原因。这些鲸鱼中，很多是濒危物种，比如蓝鲸，它们的数量已经很少了。
The problem is particularly troublesome here in Sri Lanka, where a largely unstudied population of blue whales, possibly numbering in the thousands, has come under increasing pressure from commercial shipping and from a boom in unregulated whale-watching boats.
问题在斯里兰卡海域尤其堪忧。这里的蓝鲸约有数千头，基本还没有得到深入的研究。而商业轮船和大批私自出海的观鲸船给它们带来了越来越大的威胁。
Because these waters are poorly monitored, scientists do not know for sure whether ship strikes are on the rise. But the whale’s death in April was already the sixth of the year, according to news reports. In one grisly encounter in March, a blue whale was found draped over the bow of a container vessel in the harbor in the capital, Colombo, 90 miles north of this beach resort. Last year, some 20 whale carcasses (not all of them blue whales) were seen around the island, according to Arjan Rajasuriya, a research officer with the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency in Colombo. It is not known how many of the deaths resulted from ship strikes.
对这片水域的观测还很不够，因此科学家无法确知撞击事件是否在上升。但是，据新闻报道，4月份的这次鲸鱼死亡已经是今年第六起了。今年3月也发生了一起惨祸，人们在首都科伦坡的海港发现一头蓝鲸，垂在集装箱货轮的船头，海港离这片海滩度假村有90英里。据科伦坡全国水产资源研究和发展机构的阿尔然•拉扎索利亚 (Arjan Rajasuriya) 介绍，去年一年，海岛周围发现的鲸鱼尸体（不都是蓝鲸）约有20具。不知道有多少鲸鱼是死于船只撞击。
“These strikes likely represent only a portion of the likely true mortality,” said John Calambokidis, a whale researcher in Olympia, Wash., who documents ship strikes off the West Coast of the United States. Because blue whales often sink soon after they are struck, most such deaths go unrecorded, and Dr. Calambokidis says the true number “could be 10 or 20 times” the number seen.
“这些伤害，可能只是真实死亡数字中的一小部分，”华盛顿州奥林匹亚的一位鲸类研究人员约翰·卡拉姆勃基蒂斯 (John Calambokidis) 说。他的工作是记录美国西海岸发生的船只对鲸鱼的伤害。因为蓝鲸在受到船只的伤害后，常常很快就下潜，因此这种死亡事件往往得不到记录。卡拉姆勃基蒂斯博士说，实际数字可能是我们观察到的数字的“10倍甚至20倍。”
Fifteen miles off the southern coast of Sri Lanka is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and whales are known to swim regularly inside them. But some scientists believe that the increase in whale watching could be forcing whales to seek food farther out, pushing them into the big ships’ path.
距离斯里兰卡南部沿海15英里的海域，是全球最繁忙的海运航线之一，而鲸也经常游进这些航线的范围内。但是，一些科学家认为，由于观鲸活动越来越频繁，这可能迫使鲸到更远的海域觅食，从而游进大船的航线。
“I’m afraid the whales are being harassed by the whale-watching boats and that this could affect their movement,” said Asha de Vos, a whale researcher here.
一位本地鲸鱼研究人员阿莎·德沃斯 (Asha de Vos) 说：“我觉得鲸鱼正在受到观鲸船的骚扰，这可能会影响它们的活动。”
The threat to the whales has some researchers scrambling to learn as much as they can about them and to find a way to protect them.
鲸鱼面临的威胁让一些研究人员急切地想尽可能多地了解鲸鱼，从而找到一种方法来保护它们。
“Having these whales right off the coast is pretty amazing,” said Ari S. Friedlaender, a research scientist at the Duke University Marine Laboratory. “We know so little about blue whales in general that any place that you have easy access to animals like this, your learning curve is going to be exponential.”
“鲸鱼出现在海岸边这么近的地方，是很令人惊异的，”在杜克大学海洋实验室 (Duke University Marine Laboratory) 从事研究工作的科学家阿里·S·弗里德兰德 (Ari S. Friedlaender) 说。“我们总体上对蓝鲸的了解太少了，因此无论在哪里，如果能像这样轻易地近距离观察它们，都会极大地促进我们的研究工作。”
In 2009, Sri Lanka ended a deadly 25-year civil war that largely kept foreign scientists and researchers away from these waters. Several general surveys in the 1970s revealed that there were whales here, but it was not until the 1990s that interest started to grow. Researchers were particularly drawn by the whales’ tendency to stay here year round; other blue whale populations are known to migrate vast distances.
2009年，斯里兰卡结束了长达25年的殊死内战。战争期间，外国科学家和研究人员基本无法接近附近的海域。20世纪70年代的几次综合调查显示，这里有蓝鲸，但直到90年代，对蓝鲸的兴趣才开始增长。这里的蓝鲸不随季节迁徙，是吸引研究者的一个原因。其他地方的蓝鲸都会做长距离的迁移。
Perhaps no one has studied these whales and promoted their conservation as much as Ms. de Vos.
可能没有人像德沃斯一样对这里的鲸鱼进行了如此深入的研究，并呼吁对它们加以保护。
Three years ago, Ms. de Vos started the Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project, a long-term research program that she hopes will stop the carnage and raise awareness of the whales here. For the last three years, from December to May, she has been photographing the whales and using scientific instruments to better understand their feeding behaviors.
三年前，德沃斯启动了斯里兰卡蓝鲸计划 (Sri Lankan Blue Whale Project)。她希望这个长期的研究项目能够阻止蓝鲸的惨死，并提高人们保护此处蓝鲸的意识。在过去的三年中，每年从12月到5月，她都会对这些蓝鲸进行拍摄，并使用科学仪器来更好地了解蓝鲸的摄食行为。
“Clearly, there’s something down there that’s keeping them around. But we need to know where it is and how much,” she said.
“毫无疑问，这片水域一定有什么东西吸引着蓝鲸，使它们长年留在此地。我们需要弄清楚具体是在什么地方，有多少，”她说。
In March, Ms. de Vos was helped by a team of researchers from the Duke University Marine Lab who brought along an electronic echo sounder, which uses sound waves to measure the density of prey in the water. For 10 days, she and the team crisscrossed miles of water, taking measurements and finding spots thick with krill.
3月，德沃斯得到了来自杜克大学海洋实验室 (Duke University Marine Lab) 的研究小组的帮助。他们带来了一台电子回声探测器，可以用声波来探测出水中食物的密度。她和研究小组用了10天时间，穿梭往来于这片海域，航程数英里，进行测算，并找到了磷虾富集的地点。
The data will help scientists better understand where and when the whales are feeding — and, she hopes, persuade the government to shift the shipping lanes farther out to sea.
这些数据能帮助科学家更好地了解蓝鲸摄食的地点和时间。并且，她希望，这项研究也能说服政府把海运航线规划至更远的海域。