I would like to share with you this morning some stories about the ocean through my work as a still photographer for National Geographic magazine. I guess I became an underwater photographer and a photojournalist because I fell in love with the sea as a child. And I wanted to tell stories about all the amazing things I was seeing underwater, incredible wildlife and interesting behaviors. And after even 30 years of doing this, after 30 years of exploring the ocean, I never cease to be amazed at the extraordinary encounters that I have while I'm at sea. But more and more frequently these days I'm seeing terrible things underwater as well, things that I don't think most people realize. And I've been compelled to turn my camera towards these issues to tell a more complete story. I want people to see what's happening underwater, both the horror and the magic.
今天早上我想与你们分享 在我作为一名国家地理杂志 的摄影师时的 一些关于海洋的报道。 我想我成为一名水下摄影师 和摄影记者 是因为在我还是个孩子时就爱上了大海。 并且我想讲述一些 关于我在水下看到的所有令人惊叹的事, 不可思议的野生动物和他们有趣的行为。 而在从事这些三十年后, 在对海洋进行三十年的探索之后, 我从未停止过对 那些我在海上遇到的非凡遭遇的惊奇。 但这些天来,我也越来越频繁的 在水下看到可怕的事情, 那些我认为许多人没有意识到的事情。 而我不得以把我的相机转向这些问题, 来讲述一个更完整的报道。 我想让人们看看水下正在发生的事情, 无论是可怕的还是充满魔力的。
The first story that I did for National Geographic, where I recognized the ability to include environmental issues within a natural history coverage, was a story I proposed on harp seals. The story I wanted to do initially was just a small focus to look at the few weeks each year where these animals migrate down from the Canadian arctic to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada to engage in courtship, mating and to have their pups. And all of this is played out against the backdrop of transient pack ice that moves with wind and tide. And because I'm an underwater photographer, I wanted to do this story from both above and below, to make pictures like this that show one of these little pups making its very first swim in the icy 29-degree water. But as I got more involved in the story, I realized that there were two big environmental issues I couldn't ignore. The first was that these animals continue to be hunted, killed with hakapiks at about eight, 15 days old. It actually is the largest marine mammal slaughter on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of these seals being killed every year.
第一个报道是在我为国家地理工作时, 在那儿我认识到了 在自然历史封面故事中报道环境问题的能力, 这个报道是关于格林兰海豹的。 现在,我想说的报道,起初 只是小小的关注一下,在每年的几个星期中 这些动物为了求爱,交配和产子 从加拿大境内的北极圈迁徙 到加拿大的圣劳伦斯海湾。 而这一切都是为了把握住 被风和洋流移动的 转瞬即逝的浮冰。 而由于我是一名水下摄影师, 我想从水下和水上两个角度来讲述这一报道, 来拍摄照片,像这张,显示了这些小海豹中的一个, 在冰冷的,29华氏的水中开始它真正的第一次游泳。 但是随着我更深入的参与到这个报道中, 我认识到有两个令我不能忽视的大的环境问题。 第一个是,这些动物持续被猎杀, 在大约8到15天大时,被棘棒杀死。 实际上,这是这个星球上 最大规模的对海洋哺乳动物的屠杀, 每年都有数以百计,数以千记的海豹被杀害。
But as disturbing as that is, I think the bigger problem for harp seals is the loss of sea ice due to global warming. This is an aerial picture that I made that shows the Gulf of St. Lawrence during harp seal season. And even though we see a lot of ice in this picture, there's a lot of water as well, which wasn't there historically. And the ice that is there is quite thin. The problem is that these pups need a stable platform of solid ice in order to nurse from their moms. They only need 12 days from the moment they're born until they're on their own. But if they don't get 12 days, they can fall into the ocean and die. This is a photo that I made showing one of these pups that's only about five or seven days old -- still has a little bit of the umbilical cord on its belly -- that has fallen in because of the thin ice, and the mother is frantically trying to push it up to breathe and to get it back to stable purchase. This problem has continued to grow each year since I was there. I read that last year the pup mortality rate was 100 percent in parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So, clearly, this species has a lot of problems going forward. This ended up becoming a cover story at National Geographic. And it received quite a bit of attention.
但令人不安的是, 我认为对格陵兰海豹来说最大的问题是, 由于全球变暖导致的海冰的减少。 我拍摄的这张航拍照片显示了 在格陵兰海豹繁殖季的圣劳伦斯海湾。 虽然我们在照片中看到了大量的冰, 同时也有大量过去没有的水面。 而且这些冰相当薄。 问题是,为了得到它们母亲的照料,这些小海豹需要 一个由坚实的冰形成的稳固的平台。 从它们出生到能够照顾自己只需要12天。 但如果没有这12天, 它们会掉入海洋死掉。 我拍摄的这张照片显示了 一只大约5到7天大的小海豹-- 在它的肚脐上还残留了一点脐带-- 它由于冰面太薄而掉入海中, 它的妈妈正疯狂的试着把它推上去呼吸, 并让它回到稳固的地方。 自从我在那儿以来,这一问题每年都持续恶化。 我发现,去年,在圣劳伦斯海湾的部分地方 小海豹的死亡率是百分之百。 所以,很明显,这个物种面临着很多问题。 这最终成为了国家地理的一篇封面报道。 并且它获得了一定的关注。
And with that, I saw the potential to begin doing other stories about ocean problems. So I proposed a story on the global fish crisis, in part because I had personally witnessed a lot of degradation in the ocean over the last 30 years, but also because I read a scientific paper that stated that 90 percent of the big fish in the ocean have disappeared in the last 50 or 60 years. These are the tuna, the billfish and the sharks. When I read that, I was blown away by those numbers. I thought this was going to be headline news in every media outlet, but it really wasn't, so I wanted to do a story that was a very different kind of underwater story. I wanted it to be more like war photography, where I was making harder-hitting pictures that showed readers what was happening to marine wildlife around the planet.
而有了这些关注,我看到了开始 从事有关海洋问题的相关题材的潜力。 因此我起草了一个关于全球鱼类危机的报道, 部分是因为在过去三十年间,我亲眼目睹了 这一问题在海洋中的恶化过程, 也是因为我读了一篇科学论文, 这篇论文表明,海洋中百分之九十的大型鱼类 已经在过去的50或60年内消失了。 如金枪鱼,旗鱼和鲨鱼。 而当我读到这些时,我被这些数字惊呆了。 我认为这应该成为各种媒体的头条新闻。 但实际上它没有,所以我想做 这一与水下报道完全不同的报道。 我希望它更像是战争摄影, 其中有我捕捉到的那些难得一见的镜头 来向读者呈现在全球范围内 海洋野生动物正在面临的危机。
The first component of the story that I thought was essential, however, was to give readers a sense of appreciation for the ocean animals that they were eating. You know, I think people go into a restaurant, and somebody orders a steak, and we all know where steak comes from, and somebody orders a chicken, and we know what a chicken is, but when they're eating bluefin sushi, do they have any sense of the magnificent animal that they're consuming? These are the lions and tigers of the sea. In reality, these animals have no terrestrial counterpart; they're unique in the world. These are animals that can practically swim from the equator to the poles and can crisscross entire oceans in the course of a year. If we weren't so efficient at catching them, because they grow their entire life, would have 30-year-old bluefin out there that weigh a ton. But the truth is we're way too efficient at catching them, and their stocks have collapsed worldwide.
报道的第一部分,我认为是无论如何都必不可少的, 是让读者有一种对为他们所食用 的海洋动物的感激之情。 嗯,我想当人们走进饭店, 点一份牛排,我们都知道牛排是从哪儿来的, 而点一份鸡肉,我们也知道鸡是什么样的, 但当吃一份蓝鳍金枪鱼寿司时, 人们对这种他们正在吃的这种伟大的动物知道多少呢? 现在,它们是海洋中的狮子和老虎。 事实上,这些动物并没有相对应的陆上生物。 它们是这世界上唯一的。 它们是几乎能从 赤道游到两极的动物 并且它们能在一年内在整个海洋中纵横游弋。 如果我们不是这么有效率的去捕捉它们,它们一直生长,终其一生, 我们可能会看到一只可能会重达一吨的三十岁的蓝鳍金枪鱼。 但事实是,我们在捕捉它们上太有效率了, 它们在全球的数量暴跌。
This is the daily auction at the Tsukiji Fish Market that I photographed a couple years ago. And every single day these tuna, bluefin like this, are stacked up like cordwood, just warehouse after warehouse. As I wandered around and made these pictures, it sort of occurred to me that the ocean's not a grocery store, you know. We can't keep taking without expecting serious consequences as a result.
这是我几年前在筑地鱼类市场 拍摄的每日拍卖。 而每一天,这些金枪鱼,像这样的蓝鳍金枪鱼, 被像木材一样堆积在 一个又一个仓库。 而在我四处转悠,拍下这些照片时, 我突然想到,海洋不是一个杂货店,你知道的。 我们不能不断的索取,并期待 不会产生严重的后果。
I also, with the story, wanted to show readers how fish are caught, some of the methods that are used to catch fish, like a bottom trawler, which is one of the most common methods in the world. This was a small net that was being used in Mexico to catch shrimp, but the way it works is essentially the same everywhere in the world. You have a large net in the middle with two steel doors on either end. And as this assembly is towed through the water, the doors meet resistance with the ocean, and it opens the mouth of the net, and they place floats at the top and a lead line on the bottom. And this just drags over the bottom, in this case to catch shrimp. But as you can imagine, it's catching everything else in its path as well. And it's destroying that precious benthic community on the bottom, things like sponges and corals, that critical habitat for other animals.
用这篇报道,我同时也想向读者展示 鱼类是如何被抓住和一些用来捕鱼的方法, 如一艘拖网渔船,这是世界上最通用的捕鱼方法之一。 这是一张在墨西哥用于捕虾的小网, 但在世界各地,它的工作方式在本质上是一样的。 在两端的两个钢制门中间 放置一张大网。 当这个装置在水中被拖动时, 门受到海水的阻力, 然后它会张开网, 而后他们会在顶部放置浮标和在底部放置一条引导线。 接着,通过这根线在底部拖拽来捕虾。 但正如你所能想到的那样,它还会捕捉在它行进路线上其他的一切。 而这会破坏海底珍贵的底栖生物群落, 如海绵和珊瑚, 而这是其他动物的重要栖息地。
This photograph I made of the fisherman holding the shrimp that he caught after towing his nets for one hour. So he had a handful of shrimp, maybe seven or eight shrimp, and all those other animals on the deck of the boat are bycatch. These are animals that died in the process, but have no commercial value. So this is the true cost of a shrimp dinner, maybe seven or eight shrimp and 10 pounds of other animals that had to die in the process. And to make that point even more visual, I swam under the shrimp boat and made this picture of the guy shoveling this bycatch into the sea as trash and photographed this cascade of death, you know, animals like guitarfish, bat rays, flounder, pufferfish, that only an hour before, were on the bottom of the ocean, alive, but now being thrown back as trash.
我拍摄的这张照片是渔民 拿着他拖网一小时后捕来的虾。 那么,他收获几只虾,也许七只或者八只虾, 而甲板上所有其他的动物都是误捕的。 这些是在被捕获的过程中就死去了的动物 但它们没有商业价值。 这就是为吃一顿虾的真实代价, 也许有七八只虾 和10磅不得不在被捕获过程中死去的其他动物。 而为了让这一点更加直观,我游到了捕虾船的下面, 并拍摄了这张照片,一个渔人把误捕物 像垃圾一样铲入海中, 拍摄了这大量的死亡, 嗯,这些动物,像犁头鳐,鲾鲼 , 比目鱼,河豚在一个小时之前, 还在海底,活着, 但现在却被当做垃圾扔回海洋。
I also wanted to focus on the shark fishing industry because, currently on planet Earth, we're killing over 100 million sharks every single year. But before I went out to photograph this component, I sort of wrestled with the notion of how do you make a picture of a dead shark that will resonate with readers You know, I think there's still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark. But this one morning I jumped in and found this thresher that had just recently died in the gill net. And with its huge pectoral fins and eyes still very visible, it struck me as sort of a crucifixion, if you will. This ended up being the lead picture in the global fishery story in National Geographic. And I hope that it helped readers to take notice of this problem of 100 million sharks.
我也想聚焦于鲨鱼捕捞业, 因为,目前在地球上, 我们每年杀死超过 100万条鲨鱼。 但在我出去拍摄这部分之前, 我对如何为死去的鲨鱼拍摄一张 能让读者产生共鸣的照片有些纠结。 嗯,我想仍然有许多人觉得 只有死鲨鱼才是好鲨鱼。 但在一个早晨我跳入水中,发现了这条长尾鲨, 它刚刚死在这张刺网中。 它那巨大的胸鳍和眼睛还清晰可见, 它有点像耶稣受难像那样让我目瞪口呆,如果你愿意那么说的话。 这张照片最终在国家地理的全球渔业报道 中成为了主要照片。 并且我希望它能帮助读者注意到 这个一亿条鲨鱼都在面临的问题。
And because I love sharks -- I'm somewhat obsessed with sharks -- I wanted to do another, more celebratory, story about sharks, as a way of talking about the need for shark conservation. So I went to the Bahamas because there're very few places in the world where sharks are doing well these days, but the Bahamas seem to be a place where stocks were reasonably healthy, largely due to the fact that the government there had outlawed longlining several years ago. And I wanted to show several species that we hadn't shown much in the magazine and worked in a number of locations.
而由于我爱鲨鱼--我对鲨鱼有些着迷-- 我想做另一个,更加开心些的关于鲨鱼的报道, 来谈谈保护鲨鱼的必要性。 因此我去了巴哈马群岛, 因为那是目前世界上少有的 对鲨鱼保护的比较好的地方, 在巴哈马群岛,鲨鱼数量似乎相当健康, 这很大程度上归功于当地政府 在几年前取缔了延绳钓。 我想展示一些我们 在杂志中没怎么展示过的物种。它们生活在许多地方。
One of the locations was this place called Tiger Beach, in the northern Bahamas where tiger sharks aggregate in shallow water. This is a low-altitude photograph that I made showing our dive boat with about a dozen of these big old tiger sharks sort of just swimming around behind. But the one thing I definitely didn't want to do with this coverage was to continue to portray sharks as something like monsters. I didn't want them to be overly threatening or scary. And with this photograph of a beautiful 15-feet, probably 14-feet, I guess, female tiger shark, I sort of think I got to that goal, where she was swimming with these little barjacks off her nose, and my strobe created a shadow on her face. And I think it's a gentler picture, a little less threatening, a little more respectful of the species.
其中有一个叫做老虎海滩的地方, 在巴哈马群岛的北部,在那儿虎鲨 聚集在浅水中。 这张我从低角度拍摄的照片 显示了在我们的潜水船周围围绕着大约一打巨大的年老的虎鲨, 它们只是在下面四处游动。 但我绝对不想让这张封面 继续把鲨鱼描绘的有点像怪兽似的。 我不想它们被渲染的过度有威胁或可怕。 而用这张有一条美丽的 15英尺,或许14英尺,我估计, 雌性虎鲨的照片, 我认为我有点达到目的了, 她在水中漫游,一些平线若鰺环绕在她鼻侧, 我的闪光灯在她脸上产生了一道阴影。 而我想这张照片有更多的优雅,更少的威胁, 有对这个物种更多尊重。
I also searched on this story for the elusive great hammerhead, an animal that really hadn't been photographed much until maybe about seven or 10 years ago. It's a very solitary creature. But this is an animal that's considered data deficient by science in both Florida and in the Bahamas. You know, we know almost nothing about them. We don't know where they migrate to or from, where they mate, where they have their pups, and yet, hammerhead populations in the Atlantic have declined about 80 percent in the last 20 to 30 years. You know, we're losing them faster than we can possibly find them.
我也检索了一篇关于 这只鲜见的大锤头鲨的报道, 这类动物直到大约七年或十年之前 还没怎么被拍摄过。 它是一种完全独居的生物。 但这种动物无论是在佛罗里达还是在巴哈马群岛 都被认为是一种缺乏科学数据的有待研究的物种。 嗯,我们对它们几乎一无所知。 我们不知道它们从哪儿迁徙而来,要迁徙到哪儿去, 它们在哪儿交配,在哪儿抚育幼仔, 然而,锤头鲨在大西洋的种群 在最近的二三十年内减少了大约百分之八十。 你知道的,我们正在以比我们可能找到它们更快的速度失去它们。
This is the oceanic whitetip shark, an animal that is considered the fourth most dangerous species, if you pay attention to such lists. But it's an animal that's about 98 percent in decline throughout most of its range. Because this is a pelagic animal and it lives out in the deeper water, and because we weren't working on the bottom, I brought along a shark cage here, and my friend, shark biologist Wes Pratt is inside the cage. You'll see that the photographer, of course, was not inside the cage here, so clearly the biologist is a little smarter than the photographer I guess.
这是白鳍鲨, 一种被认为在最危险的物种中排名第四的物种, 如果你留意了这样的列表的话。 但是这种动物的数量,在大多数它们的活动区域内 大约下降了98%。 由于它是种远洋动物,并且它生活在深水中, 并由于我们没有在海下工作过, 我带了个防鲨笼, 我的朋友,鲨鱼生物学家维斯 普拉特呆在这个笼子里。 当然,你将看到摄影师并不在笼子里, 很明显生物学家要比摄影师聪明一点,我觉得。
And lastly with this story, I also wanted to focus on baby sharks, shark nurseries. And I went to the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas, to work with lemon shark pups. This is a photo of a lemon shark pup, and it shows these animals where they live for the first two to three years of their lives in these protective mangroves. This is a very sort of un-shark-like photograph. It's not what you typically might think of as a shark picture. But, you know, here we see a shark that's maybe 10 or 11 inches long swimming in about a foot of water. But this is crucial habitat and it's where they spend the first two, three years of their lives, until they're big enough to go out on the rest of the reef. After I left Bimini, I actually learned that this habitat was being bulldozed to create a new golf course and resort.
在这报道的最后, 我还想关注一下幼鲨的托儿所。 为了观察柠檬鲨幼鲨, 我又去了巴哈马群岛的比米尼岛, 这是张柠檬鲨幼鲨的照片, 照片显示的是,这些动物在生命的头两三年里生活在 受保护的红树林。 这甚至于有点不像是张鲨鱼的照片。 这不是那种通常意义上的鲨鱼照片。 但,你知道,我们在这里看到一条10或11英尺长的鲨鱼 游弋在大约一英尺深的水中。 但这是重要的栖息地,它们会在这儿度过生命中的头两三年, 直到它们足够强壮才会游到暗礁的其他地方去。 在我离开比米尼之后,我真正地认识到 这些栖息地正在被推平来 建设一个新的高尔夫球场和度假胜地。
And other recent stories have looked at single, flagship species, if you will, that are at risk in the ocean as a way of talking about other threats. One such story I did documented the leatherback sea turtle. This is the largest, widest-ranging, deepest-diving and oldest of all turtle species. Here we see a female crawling out of the ocean under moonlight on the island of Trinidad. These are animals whose lineage dates back about 100 million years. And there was a time in their lifespan where they were coming out of the water to nest and saw Tyrannosaurus rex running by. And today, they crawl out and see condominiums. But despite this amazing longevity, they're now considered critically endangered. In the Pacific, where I made this photograph, their stocks have declined about 90 percent in the last 15 years.
如果你愿意,我们来看看其他一些最近的报道, 关注于单一的,旗舰物种的报道, 它们所面临的风险, 以此说明其他的威胁。 这是我记录棱皮龟的一篇报道。 这是所有海龟中最大的,分布最广的, 潜水最深的,也是最长寿的一种。 在这儿我们看到的是,在特立尼达岛上,一只雌龟 在月光下 爬出海洋。 这种动物的历史可以追溯至大约一亿年前。 在它们的生命中,曾经在 它们爬出水面筑巢时 看着雷克斯暴龙从旁边跑过。 而今天,它们爬出来,看到的是公寓。 但是,尽管有着令人惊叹的长寿, 现在,它们被认为处于极度濒危。 在太平洋,我拍摄了这张照片, 它们的数量在近15年里 下降了大约百分之九十。
This is a photograph that shows a hatchling about to taste saltwater for the very first time beginning this long and perilous journey. Only one in a thousand leatherback hatchlings will reach maturity. But that's due to natural predators like vultures that pick them off on a beach or predatory fish that are waiting offshore. Nature has learned to compensate with that, and females have multiple clutches of eggs to overcome those odds. But what they can't deal with is anthropogenic stresses, human things, like this picture that shows a leatherback caught at night in a gill net. I actually jumped in and photographed this, and with the fisherman's permission, I cut the turtle out, and it was able to swim free. But, you know, thousands of other leatherbacks each year are not so fortunate, and the species' future is in great danger.
这张照片显示的是,一只刚孵出的幼龟 正打算第一次尝试海水, 开始它漫长的冒险之旅。 只有千分之一的 棱皮龟幼龟会到达成年阶段。 但这取决于他们的天敌 比如,在海滩上啄食它们的秃鹰 或是等在近海的掠食性鱼类。 自然学会了对这些进行补偿, 雌龟会产下多窝蛋来 克服这种不利局面。 但是它们无法应付的是人为的压力, 人类的行为,如这张照片中所显示的 一只棱皮龟在晚上被一张刺网所捕获。 实际上我在跳下水拍摄的这张照片之后, 在渔民的允许下 把这只海龟从网里剪下来,这样它就能自由游动了。 但,你知道,每年有数以千计的棱皮龟 并没有这么幸运, 这个物种的未来面临着极大的危险。
Another charismatic megafauna species that I worked with is the story I did on the right whale. And essentially, the story is this with right whales, that about a million years ago, there was one species of right whale on the planet, but as land masses moved around and oceans became isolated, the species sort of separated, and today we have essentially two distinct stocks. We have the Southern right whale that we see here and the North Atlantic right whale that we see here with a mom and calf off the coast of Florida. Now, both species were hunted to the brink of extinction by the early whalers, but the Southern right whales have rebounded a lot better because they're located in places farther away from human activity.
在我参与过的报道中,另一个极具魅力的大型物种 是露脊鯨。 而且基本上,关于露脊鯨的报道是这样的, 大约一百万年前,在这个 星球上有一种露脊鯨, 但当大陆板块移动,海洋被分割, 这个物种被分隔开了, 因此如今,本质上说有两个截然不同的种群。 我们在这儿看到的是南露脊鯨, 而在这儿看到的是北大西洋露脊鯨, 母鲸带着孩子离开佛罗里达的海岸。 目前,这两种鲸都已经被早期的捕鲸者猎杀至 灭绝的边缘。 但南露脊鯨的数量有了更大的反弹, 这是因为它们所在的区域 离人类活动更远些。
The North Atlantic right whale is listed as the most endangered species on the planet today because they are urban whales; they live along the east coast of North America, United States and Canada, and they have to deal with all these urban ills. This photo shows an animal popping its head out at sunset off the coast of Florida. You can see the coal burning plant in the background. They have to deal with things like toxins and pharmaceuticals that are flushed out into the ocean, and maybe even affecting their reproduction. They also get entangled in fishing gear. This is a picture that shows the tail of a right whale. And those white markings are not natural markings. These are entanglement scars. 72 percent of the population has such scars, but most don't shed the gear, things like lobster traps and crab pots. They hold on to them, and it eventually kills them. And the other problem is they get hit by ships. And this was an animal that was struck by a ship in Nova Scotia, Canada being towed in, where they did a necropsy to confirm the cause of death, which was indeed a ship strike. So all of these ills are stacking up against these animals and keeping their numbers very low.
北大西洋露脊鯨被列入 目前地球上最濒危物种名单, 因为它们是城市鲸,他们生活在北美洲东海岸沿线, 美国和加拿大, 他们不得不面对一些城市病。 这张照片显示了一头鲸在夕阳下的佛罗里达海岸把它的头探出海面。 你能看到背景中的烧煤的电厂。 它们不得不面对一些被排入海洋的 物质,如毒素和药物, 而这些可能会影响它们的繁殖能力。 它们也会被渔具缠住。 这张照片显示了一条露脊鯨的尾部。 这些白色的标记不是天然的胎记, 这些是与渔具纠缠所造成的伤疤。 种群中有百分之七十二带有这种伤疤, 但它们中多数都没能摆脱这些渔具,如龙虾陷阱和捕蟹笼。 这些装置紧紧抓住它们,并最终杀死它们。 另一个问题是,它们会被船舶击伤。 这只被拖回的动物,是在加拿大新斯科舍省 被船击中的, 在那儿他们为它做了一次尸检 来确认死因, 尸检证明确实是被船击中。 因此,所有这些针对这种动物的弊端累积起来, 使得它们的数量变得非常少。
And to draw a contrast with that beleaguered North Atlantic population, I went to a new pristine population of Southern right whales that had only been discovered about 10 years ago in the sub-Antarctic of New Zealand, a place called the Auckland Islands. I went down there in the winter time. And these are animals that had never seen humans before, and I was one of the first people they probably had ever seen. And I got in the water with them, and I was amazed at how curious they were. This photograph shows my assistant standing on the bottom at about 70 feet and one of these amazingly beautiful, 45-foot, 70-ton whales, like a city bus just swimming up, you know. They were in perfect condition, very fat and healthy, robust, no entanglement scars, the way they're supposed to look. You know, I read that the pilgrims, when they landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1620, wrote that you could walk across Cape Cod Bay on the backs of right whales. And we can't go back and see that today, but maybe we can preserve what we have left.
而为了与困境中的北大西洋的种群数量做对比, 我找到了一个南露脊鲸种群数量的原始数据, 这些数据是仅在大约10年之前披露的, 在新西兰亚南极地区的一个名叫奥克兰群岛的地方的南露脊鲸的数量。 我在一个冬天去的那儿。 并且在那儿的动物在此之前从未见过人类。 而我可能是他们见到的第一个人类。 我跳入水中和它们在一起, 我对它们的好奇程度感到惊讶。 这张照片中,我的助手站在大约70英尺深的海底 和一条令人惊叹的美丽的,45英尺长, 70吨的鲸, 它像一辆城市公交车在游泳,你知道的。 它们处于完美的状况中, 非常巨大且健康,十分结实,没有纠缠造成的伤疤, 这才是它们应有的样子。 你知道,当清教徒1620年在位于马萨诸塞州 的普利茅斯石登陆时, 写到,你能踩着露脊鲸的背 走过科德角湾。 而如今我们无法回到那一时刻去看看了, 但也许我们让我们现在拥有的保存下去。
And I wanted to close this program with a story of hope, a story I did on marine reserves as sort of a solution to the problem of overfishing, the global fish crisis story. I settled on working in the country of New Zealand because New Zealand was rather progressive, and is rather progressive in terms of protecting their ocean. And I really wanted this story to be about three things: I wanted it to be about abundance, about diversity and about resilience. And one of the first places I worked was a reserve called Goat Island in Leigh of New Zealand. What the scientists there told me was that when protected this first marine reserve in 1975, they hoped and expected that certain things might happen.
我想用一篇充满希望的报道来结束这次演讲, 一篇我做的关于海洋保护区的报道, 可以说是一个对 过度捕鱼问题和全球鱼类危机的解决方案的报道。 我在新西兰定居并在那儿工作, 因为新西兰是相当进步的, 在保护他们的海洋方面做的相当不错。 而且我真的希望这篇报道与三件事相关。 我希望它与丰富, 多样性和回复能力相关。 而我最早工作过的地方之一是 一个位于新西兰雷伊镇的 名为山羊岛的保护区。 那儿的科学家告诉我, 当1975年这第一个海洋保护区成立时, 他们希望并期待着某些事情的发生。
For example, they hoped that certain species of fish like the New Zealand snapper would return because they had been fished to the brink of commercial extinction. And they did come back. What they couldn't predict was that other things would happen. For example, these fish predate on sea urchins, and when the fish were all gone, all anyone ever saw underwater was just acres and acres of sea urchins. But when the fish came back and began predating and controlling the urchin population, low and behold, kelp forests emerged in shallow water. And that's because the urchins eat kelp. So when the fish control the urchin population, the ocean was restored to its natural equilibrium. You know, this is probably how the ocean looked here one or 200 years ago, but nobody was around to tell us.
例如,他们希望某些种类的鱼 如新西兰加吉鱼,会回来, 因为他们已经被商业捕捞到了灭绝的边缘。 而它们确实回来了。还发生了其他一些他们没有预料到的事情。 例如,这些鱼 吃海胆。 而当鱼类消失的时候, 任何人都只能在水下只能看到 成片成片的海胆。 但当这些鱼回来了, 就开始吃海胆,开始控制海胆的数量, 慢慢的,浅水区出现了大型海藻群。 那是因为海胆以大型海藻为食。 因此,当鱼类控制了海胆的数量时, 海洋恢复了她的自然平衡。 嗯,这也许这里的海洋还是 一百或两百前年看起来的那样,但没人能告诉我们是不是这样。
I worked in other parts of New Zealand as well, in beautiful, fragile, protected areas like in Fiordland, where this sea pen colony was found. Little blue cod swimming in for a dash of color. In the northern part of New Zealand, I dove in the blue water, where the water's a little warmer, and photographed animals like this giant sting ray swimming through an underwater canyon. Every part of the ecosystem in this place seems very healthy, from tiny, little animals like a nudibrank crawling over encrusting sponge or a leatherjacket that is a very important animal in this ecosystem because it grazes on the bottom and allows new life to take hold.
我也在新西兰的其他地方工作过, 在一些美丽的,脆弱的保护区, 如峡湾,在那儿发现了海鳃聚集地。 蓝色的小鳕鱼游曳其中,增添一抹色彩。 在新西兰的北部, 我跳入蓝色的有些温暖海水, 给动物们拍照,如这条正游过 海底峡谷的巨大的黄貂鱼。 在这个地方的生态系统的每一个部分 看起来都非常健康, 从小如这条 爬过壳状海绵的海蛞蝓, 或是一条大蚊幼虫, 它在这个生态系统中是十分重要的动物, 因为它在海底觅食并让新生命能扎根于此。
And I wanted to finish with this photograph, a picture I made on a very stormy day in New Zealand when I just laid on the bottom amidst a school of fish swirling around me. And I was in a place that had only been protected about 20 years ago. And I talked to divers that had been diving there for many years, and they said that the marine life was better here today than it was in the 1960s. And that's because it's been protected, that it has come back.
我想用这张照片作为结束, 这张照片是我在新西兰的有强暴风雨的一天拍摄的, 当时我正躺在海底, 在一群鱼环绕中。 而我在的地方仅仅在 20年前才开始被保护起来。 我与在当地潜水多年的潜水员攀谈, 他们说,如今这儿的海洋生物比 20世纪60年代时更好。 而这是因为它被保护了, 它已经恢复了。
So I think the message is clear. The ocean is, indeed, resilient and tolerant to a point, but we must be good custodians. I became an underwater photographer because I fell in love with the sea, and I make pictures of it today because I want to protect it, and I don't think it's too late.
所以,我想信息很明确。 海洋的确有一定的弹性和容忍度, 但我们必须是好的保管者。 我成为一名水下摄影师 是因为我爱上了大海, 而我今天为她拍摄照片是因为我想保护她, 并且我并不认为这为时已晚。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢