英语听力文摘 English Digest 522、噪声污染让鲸鱼也hold不住了！

 　　Noise Pollution Is Affecting Whales

 

　　If a noisy neighbor is blasting music at all hours of the day and night, drowning out your phone conversations and interrupting your sleep, you can call the police. But what is a whale to do?

 

　　Natural noise from waves, wind, rain and even earthquakes is common in oceans. Unfortunately, man made noise from oil and gas drilling, sonar, and ships is also present.

 

　　Low frequency noise has doubled off the California coast every decade since the nineteen sixties. The main culprits are ships’ propellers¹. They not only generate continuous low frequency sound, some propellerscavitate, which means they create air bubbles that collapse², creating loud popping sounds.

 

　　Whales use low frequency calls to communicate across thousands of miles of ocean. They are threatened by noise pollution because it can prevent them from contacting each other and from locating prey³. Endangered humpback and right whales, which use fibrous baleen⁴ to strain food from the water, are the most at risk.

 

　　Scientists studying right whales off Canada’s east coast have discovered that whales are sending louder calls through the water to make themselves heard. Because they invest more energy in making calls, they have less energy available for finding food and mating. Other scientists measuring whale calls against background noise pollution have discovered that right whales have lost about eighty percent of their normal communication area. This could seriously affect survival of this already threatened species.

 

　　Scientists don’t have badges and guns, but they are trying to correct the noise pollution problem. By tracking ships and marine⁵ mammals and understanding how noise travels, they are creating sound maps.

 

　　They hope to get shipping⁶ lanes moved so that the noise pollution ships create will not overlap⁷ with areas most important to the whales.

1 propellers   

n.螺旋桨，推进器( propeller的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The water was thrashing and churning about under the propellers. 水在螺旋桨下面打旋、翻滚。 来自辞典例句
• The ship's propellers churned the waves to foam. 轮船的推进器将海浪搅出泡沫。 来自辞典例句

2 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

3 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

4 baleen   

n.鲸须

参考例句：

• Other baleen whales have splash guards too,but not like this.一些须鲸物种头顶也有护住喷水孔的构造，但并不长成这样。
• Baleen whales often appear in this region. Be careful!这一带经常有须鲸出没，要注意安全啊。

5 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

6 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

7 overlap   

v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠

参考例句：

• The overlap between the jacket and the trousers is not good.夹克和裤子重叠的部分不好看。
• Tiles overlap each other.屋瓦相互叠盖。