PBS高端访谈:通过食物链引起的连锁反应将会威胁到海洋生态

 　　GWEN IFILL: While global leaders meet to discuss action on climate change, one new threat has emerged in the world's oceans.

　　As Scott Shafer from our San Francisco station KQED reports, the threat may not be visible to the naked eye, but it changes the very chemistry of essential parts of the marine¹ ecosystem².

　　SCOTT SHAFER, KQED: Coral reefs like these, vibrant³ and teeming⁴ with life, may hold clues to the future of the world's oceans.

　　STEPHEN PALUMBI, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University: Coral reefs only make up a fraction of 1 percent of the ocean, but they hold 25 percent of the ocean's species. Not only that, but they feed hundreds of millions of people, and a billion people or more get some income from coral reefs. So this is an ecosystem that is really fundamental to humans on the planet.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Steve Palumbi is the director of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. He has studied coral reefs around the world.

　　For decades, warming ocean waters have damaged, even killed coral. But Palumbi says reefs are now facing an insidious⁵ threat from a chemical change that is making ocean water more acidic.

　　STEPHEN PALUMBI: Ocean acidification affects the entire globe's oceans. And it affects organisms by reducing their growth rate and by making it more difficult to make shells. We know that fish actually react to dangers differently.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: With ocean surface waters now 30 percent more acidic than they were two centuries ago, protecting the reefs from acidification is no easy task.

　　STEPHEN PALUMBI: It's not a problem you can just turn around very quickly. It's a problem that, once it gets really bad enough, so that it's having an incredible global effect, there's nothing you can do about it. You have to stop it before that point.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: The increase in acidity⁶ is largely the result of people burning coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. That pumps massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which then sinks into the ocean waters at a rate of nine billion tons per year.

　　The carbon dioxide robs the oceans of an essential element that corals and other animals need to thrive.

　　STEPHEN PALUMBI: Corals make skeletons. That's the white part of the coral reef. And those skeletons are made of calcium⁷ carbonate. Calcium carbonate tends to dissolve if the acid level in the water gets too high.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: This model shows how the ocean chemistry has changed since 1885, and how it is expected to change over the next 80 years. The blue represents ocean conditions good for shell and coral growth. The orange represents conditions that make it difficult for many animals to grow shells or skeletons.

　　JIM BARRY, Monterey Bay Aquarium⁸ Research Institute: There's a few of them right here. Most of them might be deeper.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Jim Barry is a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. He is looking at the effects of ocean acidification on a variety of sea life, including deep sea coral.

　　JIM BARRY: The ocean critters out there are faced with a faster and larger change in ocean chemistry than they have seen for 30 to maybe 300 million years, through much of their evolutionary⁹ history.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Barry says, if one species suffers, an entire food web can suffer.

　　Barry and researcher Charles Boch are studying how ocean acidification affects abalone, specifically, whether it interferes¹⁰ with the ability of the shellfish to reproduce.

　　Inside a chilly¹¹ lab, Boch is inducing female abalones to spawn¹². Each female releases streams of small green eggs through its respiratory holes. An abalone can spawn tens of thousands of eggs at a time. In one tank are the females, in another, the males.

　　MAN: What you are seeing here is puffs¹³ of clouds, white streams that are the sperm¹⁴ being released.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Boch and Barry are putting the eggs and sperm together in water with varying levels of acidity to examine how it affects fertilization.

　　JIM BARRY: Maybe what we saw in the last experiment, where fertilization was lower in low pH, maybe it's because the sperm are not swimming as fast.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Their research suggests that ocean acidification significantly reduces the abalones' fertilization rate. Abalone are an important source of food for sea otters¹⁵, who in turn help keep kelp forests in balance.

　　JIM BARRY: We know that ocean acidification is huge. This is one of the biggest things that has happened to this earth in the last many tens of millions of years. It's a huge environmental change that's happening right in front of us.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Terry Sawyer runs Hog¹⁶ Island, an oyster¹⁷ farm on Tomales Bay, 30 miles north of San Francisco.

　　TERRY SAWYER, Hog Island Oyster Co.: And this is a big Pacific oyster. This is how big they will get.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Sawyer says ocean acidification is already affecting his business.

　　TERRY SAWYER: It's really scary. It's a very scary place to be.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: The wakeup call for him came in 2005. That's when there were massive die-offs at oyster hatcheries along the Oregon and Washington coasts. Those hatcheries supplied Sawyer and many other shellfish farmers with the seeds and larvae¹⁸ they needed to grow their oysters¹⁹.

　　TERRY SAWYER: The larvae was completely dying and their seed was completely dying. This is not a way to run a business.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Sawyer says he is concerned, not only for his business, but for all the animals who live in or depend on the oceans.

　　TERRY SAWYER: It feels like we're in the position of being the canary in the coal mine. The thing is, I am holding a canary. And so I have got a responsibility to say, well, all right, we have symptoms here that — that animal just died. OK, what are we going to do now?

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Sawyer and researchers from the University of California, Davis, are now monitoring the water quality in real time.

　　TERRY SAWYER: The purple line is pH.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: The data helps Sawyer and other oyster farmers in the area adjust planting schedules. To prepare for changing conditions, Hog Island is building its own hatchery.

　　A larger oyster hatchery has already moved to Hawaii, leaving the more caustic²⁰ waters of the Pacific Northwest.

　　JIM BARRY: That's great for that hatchery, but what does it mean for all the animals that are already living there? They can't move.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: Jim Barry fears it may already be too late to save coral reefs. He points out that four of the last five big extinctions on Earth included ocean acidification. Scientists say it's unclear if ocean acidification has reached a tipping point.

　　STEPHEN PALUMBI: Some people think we might be 80 years from being there. Now is probably the last generation where we can actually change the trajectory²¹.

　　SCOTT SHAFER: For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Scott Shafer in Monterey, California.

　　GWEN IFILL: Later tonight on PBS, a look at the recovery of Monterey Bay, California.

　　In a BBC co-production over the next three nights, “Big Blue Live” will tell the story of whales, sea otters and other marine animals who have returned to the bay after they almost disappeared decades ago.

1 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。

2 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

3 vibrant   

adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的

参考例句：

• He always uses vibrant colours in his paintings. 他在画中总是使用鲜明的色彩。
• She gave a vibrant performance in the leading role in the school play.她在学校表演中生气盎然地扮演了主角。

4 teeming   

adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注

参考例句：

• The rain was teeming down. 大雨倾盆而下。
• the teeming streets of the city 熙熙攘攘的城市街道

5 insidious   

adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧

参考例句：

• That insidious man bad-mouthed me to almost everyone else.那个阴险的家伙几乎见人便说我的坏话。
• Organized crime has an insidious influence on all who come into contact with it.所有和集团犯罪有关的人都会不知不觉地受坏影响。

6 acidity   

n.酸度，酸性

参考例句：

• This plant prefers alkaline soil,though it will readily tolerate some acidity.这种植物在酸性土壤中也能生存，但硷性土壤更加适宜。
• Gastric acidity would not prevent the organism from passing into the gut.胃的酸度不能防止细菌进入肠道。

7 calcium   

n.钙(化学符号Ca)

参考例句：

• We need calcium to make bones.我们需要钙来壮骨。
• Calcium is found most abundantly in milk.奶含钙最丰富。

8 aquarium   

n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸

参考例句：

• The first time I saw seals was in an aquarium.我第一次看见海豹是在水族馆里。
• I'm going to the aquarium with my parents this Sunday.这个星期天，我要和父母一起到水族馆去。

9 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

10 interferes   

vi. 妨碍，冲突，干涉

参考例句：

• The noise interferes with my work. 这噪音妨碍我的工作。
• That interferes with my plan. 那干扰了我的计划。

11 chilly   

adj.凉快的，寒冷的

参考例句：

• I feel chilly without a coat.我由于没有穿大衣而感到凉飕飕的。
• I grew chilly when the fire went out.炉火熄灭后，寒气逼人。

12 spawn   

n.卵，产物，后代，结果；vt.产卵，种菌丝于，产生，造成；vi.产卵，大量生产

参考例句：

• The fish were madly pushing their way upstream to spawn.鱼群为产卵而疯狂地向上游挤进。
• These fish will lay spawn in about one month from now.这些鱼大约一个月内会产卵。

13 puffs   

n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧

参考例句：

• We sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his. 我们坐在那里，轮番抽着他那支野里野气的烟斗。 来自辞典例句
• Puffs of steam and smoke came from the engine. 一股股蒸汽和烟雾从那火车头里冒出来。 来自辞典例句

14 sperm   

n.精子，精液

参考例句：

• Only one sperm fertilises an egg.只有一个精子使卵子受精。
• In human reproduction,one female egg is usually fertilized by one sperm.在人体生殖过程中，一个精子使一个卵子受精。

15 otters   

n.（水）獭( otter的名词复数 )；獭皮

参考例句：

• An attempt is being made to entice otters back to the river. 人们正试图把水獭引诱回河里去。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Otters are believed to have been on Earth for 90 million years. 水獭被认为存活在地球上已经9千多万年。 来自互联网

16 hog   

n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占

参考例句：

• He is greedy like a hog.他像猪一样贪婪。
• Drivers who hog the road leave no room for other cars.那些占着路面的驾驶员一点余地都不留给其他车辆。

17 oyster   

n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人

参考例句：

• I enjoy eating oyster; it's really delicious.我喜欢吃牡蛎，它味道真美。
• I find I fairly like eating when he finally persuades me to taste the oyster.当他最后说服我尝尝牡蛎时，我发现我相当喜欢吃。

18 larvae   

n.幼虫

参考例句：

• Larvae are parasitic on sheep.幼虫寄生在绵羊的身上。
• The larvae prey upon small aphids.这种幼虫以小蚜虫为食。

19 oysters   

牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We don't have oysters tonight, but the crayfish are very good. 我们今晚没有牡蛎供应。但小龙虾是非常好。
• She carried a piping hot grill of oysters and bacon. 她端出一盘滚烫的烤牡蛎和咸肉。

20 caustic   

adj.刻薄的，腐蚀性的

参考例句：

• He opened his mouth to make a caustic retort.他张嘴开始进行刻薄的反击。
• He enjoys making caustic remarks about other people.他喜欢挖苦别人。

21 trajectory   

n.弹道，轨道

参考例句：

• It is not difficult to sketch the subsequent trajectory.很容易描绘出它们最终的轨迹。
• The path followed by a projectile is called its trajectory.抛物体所循的路径称为它的轨道。