2006年
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①When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. ②Smaller species survived. ③The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. ④Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.
①当史前人类到达世界的新区域时，奇怪的事情发生在大型动物身上：它们突然灭绝了。②较小的物种幸存下来。③大型的、生长缓慢的动物很容易成为猎物，并被迅速猎杀直至灭绝。④现在类似的情况可能正在海洋中发生。
①That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. ②What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. ③They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. ④Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species
in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. ⑤According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. ⑥In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.
sort of strange翻译①人们很多年前就已经知晓海洋被过度捕捞这个事实。②而诸如兰森姆·迈尔斯和鲍里斯·沃尔姆这样的研究者所说明的也仅仅是情形变化有多快。③他们研究了全世界半个世纪里渔场的数据。④他们的方法不是试图确切估计在特定海域中鱼类的生物量(活生物物种的数量)，而是随着时间推移这些生物量的变化。⑤根据他们在《自然》杂志上发表的最新论文，一个新的渔场在被开发后的15年中大型捕食动物的生物量平均减少了80%。⑥在一些长期捕鱼的地区，在那基数之上又减少了一半。
①Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. ②One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. ③Today’s vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. ④That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be w
orse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. ⑤In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. ⑥Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. ⑦Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. ⑧That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.
①沃尔姆博士承认这些数据是保守的。②原因之一是捕鱼技术已经有所突破。③今天的船只可以使用50年前还没有的卫星和声波定位仪来寻猎物。④这就意味着更高比例的海洋物种正在被捕捞，因此现在和过去之间的真正差异可能比用捕捞规模变化所记录的要更糟糕。⑤早些时候，采用多钩长线法本应该捕到更多的鱼。⑥个别的鱼可能会捕捉不到，是因为没有足够挂饵的钩子来捕捉它们，这导致了过去对鱼类资源量的低估。⑦而且，在使用多钩长线捕鱼的初期，许多鱼被钩往后又被鲨鱼夺走。⑧而现在这不再是一个问题，因为附近的鲨鱼更少了。
①Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future man
agement efforts must take into account. ②They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the “shifting baseline”. ③The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past.④That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. ⑤Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.
①迈尔斯博士和沃尔姆博士认为他们的工作将提供一个准确的捕捞数量基线，它是未来渔业管理层必须要考虑的事情。②他们认为这些数据支持了现在海洋生物学家的一种观点，即“变化中的基线”。③这种观点认为人们还没发觉海洋中的巨大变化，因为他们只回顾了过去相当短的一段时期的情况。④而这很重要，因为理论认为当目标物种的生物量达到原始基数的50%左右时，从渔场中能够获得最大的可持续产量。⑤大部分渔场都远没达到这个水平，这对于渔业而言是很不利的。

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