I'm going to speak about a tiny, little idea. And this is about shifting baseline. And because the idea can be explained in one minute, I will tell you three stories before to fill in the time. And the first story is about Charles Darwin, one of my heroes. And he was here, as you well know, in '35. And you'd think he was chasing finches, but he wasn't. He was actually collecting fish. And he described one of them as very "common." This was the sailfin grouper. A big fishery was run on it until the '80s. Now the fish is on the IUCN Red List. Now this story, we have heard it lots of times on Galapagos and other places, so there is nothing particular about it. But the point is, we still come to Galapagos. We still think it is pristine. The brochures still say it is untouched. So what happens here?
我要讲的是 一个很小概念 与基准线的变动有关 这个概念一分钟就能讲完了 所以我先讲三个故事 来混时间 第一个故事 讲的是达尔文 我的偶像之一 他曾来过这里 大家都知道 那是1935年 你们可能以为他在追鸟雀 其实不是 他是在捕鱼 他说一条鱼 很”常见“ 这是一种石斑鱼 这种鱼被大量捕捉 到八十年代 现在 这种鱼已经被列入国际自然保护联盟的红色名录 这个故事 我们已经听过很多遍了 在加拉帕戈斯群岛和其他地方都听过 没什么新鲜的 问题在于 我们现在还会去加拉帕戈斯群岛 还认为那是还是原生态 旅游宣传册上还说 这里未经开发 这里究竟是什么情况
The second story, also to illustrate another concept, is called shifting waistline. (Laughter) Because I was there in '71, studying a lagoon in West Africa. I was there because I grew up in Europe and I wanted later to work in Africa. And I thought I could blend in. And I got a big sunburn, and I was convinced that I was really not from there. This was my first sunburn.
第二个故事 讲的是另一个概念 叫做变动的"腰准线" (众人笑) 1971年的时候 我在那里 考察西非的一片西湖 我去那里是因为我在欧洲长大 我想以后到非洲工作 我以为我可以融入当地社会 我还被晒伤了一大块 结果我发现我的确不是非洲来的 那是我第一次被晒伤
And the lagoon was surrounded by palm trees, as you can see, and a few mangrove. And it had tilapia about 20 centimeters, a species of tilapia called blackchin tilapia. And the fisheries for this tilapia sustained lots of fish and they had a good time and they earned more than average in Ghana. When I went there 27 years later, the fish had shrunk to half of their size. They were maturing at five centimeters. They had been pushed genetically. There were still fishes. They were still kind of happy. And the fish also were happy to be there. So nothing has changed, but everything has changed.
这片泻湖 被棕榈树环绕 你们可以看到一些红树 这里有罗非鱼 大概20厘米长 这种罗非鱼叫黑颚罗非鱼 人们捕捞罗非鱼 这让许多鱼存活了下来 它们活得很好 渔业的收入在加纳 高出平均水平 二十七年之后 我回到那里 这种鱼的大小缩减了一半 它们成年时只有五厘米长 它们的发育在遗传上被改变了 那里还有鱼 它们还是活得不错 鱼儿们也很喜欢生活在那里 似乎没什么变化 但其实 一切都改变了
My third little story is that I was an accomplice in the introduction of trawling in Southeast Asia. In the '70s -- well, beginning in the '60s -- Europe did lots of development projects. Fish development meant imposing on countries that had already 100,000 fishers to impose on them industrial fishing. And this boat, quite ugly, is called the Mutiara 4. And I went sailing on it, and we did surveys throughout the southern South China sea and especially the Java Sea. And what we caught, we didn't have words for it. What we caught, I know now, is the bottom of the sea. And 90 percent of our catch were sponges, other animals that are fixed on the bottom. And actually most of the fish, they are a little spot on the debris, the piles of debris, were coral reef fish. Essentially the bottom of the sea came onto the deck and then was thrown down.
第三个故事讲的是 将拖网捕捞 引入非洲东南部的 有我一份 在七十年代--其实是六十年代初期-- 欧洲进行了许多发展项目 渔业发展 意味着强迫 渔民人数在达十万人的国家 进行工业捕鱼 这艘船 挺难看的 叫Mutiara 4号 我乘上这艘船 我们一路做调查 沿着中国南海 尤其是爪哇海 我们捕捞到了 叫不出名字的东西 现在我知道了 我们捞到的 是海底的生物 百分之九十 是海绵 以及其他固定在海底的动物 实际上 大多数鱼 就是那堆杂物中的小点 它们是生活在珊瑚礁中的鱼 海底被端上了甲板 后来又被扔下去
And these pictures are extraordinary because this transition is very rapid. Within a year, you do a survey and then commercial fishing begins. The bottom is transformed from, in this case, a hard bottom or soft coral into a muddy mess. This is a dead turtle. They were not eaten, they were thrown away because they were dead. And one time we caught a live one. It was not drowned yet. And then they wanted to kill it because it was good to eat. This mountain of debris is actually collected by fishers every time they go into an area that's never been fished. But it's not documented.
这些照片意义非凡 因为这个变化过程非常快 不到一年 你再进行调查 接着渔业又开始了 海底发生了变化 坚硬的海底或柔软的珊瑚 变成了一滩泥泞 这是一只死了的海龟 它们没有被吃掉 而是因为死了而被扔掉的 有一次 我们捉到一只活的 它还没有淹死 他们想杀掉它 因为海龟肉很美味 这堆积如山的杂物 是渔民们捞上来的 他们每次进入未经捕捞的海域 都能捞到这些东西 而这并没有被记录在案
We transform the world, but we don't remember it. We adjust our baseline to the new level, and we don't recall what was there. If you generalize this, something like this happens. You have on the y axis some good thing: biodiversity, numbers of orca, the greenness of your country, the water supply. And over time it changes -- it changes because people do things, or naturally. Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don't perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers. And that, to a large extent, is what we want to do now. We want to sustain things that are gone or things that are not the way they were.
我们改变了世界 但却不认账 我们把基准线 调整到一个新水平 而把之前的水平抛在脑后 归纳一下 就会出现这样的情况 Y轴代表美好的事物 生物多样性 逆戟鲸的数量 你的国家的绿化 水资源供应 随着时间的变化而变化 之所以变化 是因为人们的活动或自然的变化 每代人 都会 以他们有意识之初的画面 作为标准 并往前推测 所产生的差距 他们视为一种损失 但他们没有把之前发生的事情视为一种损失 一系列变化发生了 最后你希望 保住最后可怜的幸存者 而这在很大程度上 就是我们现在要做的 我们想要保护那些消失殆尽的东西 或者那些发生了变化的东西
Now one should think this problem affected people certainly when in predatory societies, they killed animals and they didn't know they had done so after a few generations. Because, obviously, an animal that is very abundant, before it gets extinct, it becomes rare. So you don't lose abundant animals. You always lose rare animals. And therefore they're not perceived as a big loss. Over time, we concentrate on large animals, and in a sea that means the big fish. They become rarer because we fish them. Over time we have a few fish left and we think this is the baseline.
现在人们应当认为 在一个弱肉强食的社会中 这个问题当然会对人产生影响 他们捕杀动物 而直到几代人之后 才意识到他们的所作所为 因为 很显然 在一种动物灭绝 或濒临灭绝前 这种动物的数量还是很多的 所以你不会失去数量多的动物物种 你失去的是珍稀动物 所以这些动物的消失 不会被视为重大损失 随着时间推移 我们关注大型动物 在海洋中 这指的是大型鱼类 我们捕捞鱼类致使它们的数量越来越少 一段时间时候 我们只剩下少数鱼了 我们就把这个数量看做基准线
And the question is, why do people accept this? Well because they don't know that it was different. And in fact, lots of people, scientists, will contest that it was really different. And they will contest this because the evidence presented in an earlier mode is not in the way they would like the evidence presented. For example, the anecdote that some present, as Captain so-and-so observed lots of fish in this area cannot be used or is usually not utilized by fishery scientists, because it's not "scientific." So you have a situation where people don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.
问题是 人们为什么对此安之若素呢 这是因为他们不知道情况变化了 事实上 许多人 尤其是科学家 反对这种意见 他们反对 是因为 早前的分析模型中所呈现的证据方式 并不是 他们想要的呈现方式 举个例子 有人讲了一个故事 说某某船长 发现这个地区有很多鱼 这个故事不能拿来当证据 渔业科学家通常也不会采纳这个故事 因为它不够“科学” 这就造成了一个情况: 人们对过去一无所知 尽管 我们生活在文明社会中 因为他们不相信 关于过去的信息来源
And hence, the enormous role that a marine protected area can play. Because with marine protected areas, we actually recreate the past. We recreate the past that people cannot conceive because the baseline has shifted and is extremely low. That is for people who can see a marine protected area and who can benefit from the insight that it provides, which enables them to reset their baseline.
他们也不了解 一个海洋保护区域的重大角色 因为 我们实际上是通过海洋保护区 来重塑过去 我们重塑了过去 让人们无法设想过去的情况 因为基准线变动了 变得极低 这适用于 那些看到一片海洋保护区的人 和那些 从其中的深层意义获益的人 这让他们有能力重置他们的基准线
How about the people who can't do that because they have no access -- the people in the Midwest for example? There I think that the arts and film can perhaps fill the gap, and simulation. This is a simulation of Chesapeake Bay. There were gray whales in Chesapeake Bay a long time ago -- 500 years ago. And you will have noticed that the hues and tones are like "Avatar." (Laughter) And if you think about "Avatar," if you think of why people were so touched by it -- never mind the Pocahontas story -- why so touched by the imagery? Because it evokes something that in a sense has been lost. And so my recommendation, it's the only one I will provide, is for Cameron to do "Avatar II" underwater.
那么那些没有能力这么做的人呢 他们没法知道 例如中西部地区的人们 我想 艺术作品和电影 可以填补这个空缺 还有原态模拟 这是切萨皮克湾的原态模拟 很久以前 有灰鲸生活在切萨皮克湾 那是五百年前 你会注意到上面的色调 酷似“阿凡达” (众人笑) 一想到“阿凡达” 一想到人们为何会为之动容 风中奇缘的故事就不说了 为何人们会被里面的画面所打动 这是因为它激发了 我们遗失了的某样东西 我建议 这也是我唯一的建议 希望卡梅隆的“阿凡达2”能在水下拍摄
Thank you very much.
非常感谢大家
(Applause)
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