2020年经济学人 乌龟的烦恼(1)（在线收听）

Science and technology

科技板块

Conservation

保护

How to prepare poached eggs

对付偷蛋人

A tracking device may help stop the robbery of turtles' nests

一种追踪装置或许可以阻止海龟巢穴被盗

Turtles have a problem. They are delicious. And so are their eggs. That has led to heavy hunting in the past. These days, though, the seven species of marine turtle are protected in most countries. If turtle soup is legally on the menu its source will be a freshwater species such as the North American snapping turtle. But that does not stop the eggs of marine turtles being poached. Which they are, frequently.

乌龟们有一个烦恼：自己太美味，下的蛋也美味。这使得它们在过去遭受了大肆捕杀。目前，虽然有七种海龟已在大多国家的保护之下，但只要菜单上的龟汤合法，那么淡水龟种，比如北美的啮龟，就将成为原料来源。而这并未阻止海龟蛋继续被盗，被盗事件依旧频发。

Such poaching is often ignored by local bobbies. But even if the authorities do wish to clamp down on it, arresting the small-fry who dig the eggs up on beaches where turtles nest will not deal with the problem. That requires finding the trade's organisers. And this can be hard.

这种偷猎行为常被当地警察忽视，但是，即使当局真的想要强行压制，即便抓捕了那些在海龟筑巢的海滩上挖蛋的“小人物”也于事无补，他们需要找出幕后黑手(交易组织者)，但这十分困难。

To assist the process Kim WilliamsGuillén of Paso Pacifico, an American conservation charity, and Helen Pheasey of the University of Kent, in Britain, have come up with a nifty gadget. It is a globalpositioning-system transmitter enclosed in a plastic shell made by 3D printing. The result looks like a turtle's egg and weighs about the same. Dug up and carried away by poachers, it can lead the police to those poachers' bases of operation.

为了协助这一行动的进行，美国保护慈善组织帕索·太平洋地区的金·威廉斯吉伦和英国肯特大学的海伦·菲西发明了一个精巧的装置，即一种安装在由3D打印制作的塑胶蛋壳内的全球定位系统发射机，外形、重量均与海龟蛋无差。一旦这种装置被偷蛋者挖出来并带走，警察便可追踪至偷蛋者的大本营。

As they report this week in Current Biology, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey have now tested their invention in Costa Rica, a place where turtle-egg poaching is rife. They set the printer to mimic the eggs of two species, the green and the olive ridley, which frequent that country's coast-lines, and placed a decoy egg into each of 101 turtle nests on four beaches where poaching is a problem. The decoys were rigged to remain dormant until their shells were exposed to the air. At that moment—presumed to signal the arrival of poachers—the "egg" in question starts broadcasting its location once an hour.

正如本周他们在《当代生物学》上报道的那样，金·威廉斯吉伦博士和菲西博士已经在哥斯达黎加（海龟蛋被盗盛行之地）对该装置进行了测试。他们用打印机模拟了两种海龟蛋——绿蠵龟和橄榄绿蠵龟，这两种海龟经常出没于该国的海岸线上。他们在存在偷猎问题的四个海滩上的101个海龟巢穴中各放了一枚假蛋。诱饵蛋被设置成休眠模式，直到蛋壳暴露于空气之中将其触发。在那一刻——被认为是偷猎者到来的信号——这只“蛋”便开始每小时播报一次自己的位置。