I have a confession to make. I am addicted to adventure, and as a young boy, I would rather look outside the window at the birds in the trees and the sky than looking at that two-dimensional chalky blackboard where time stands still and even sometimes dies. My teachers thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't paying attention in class. They didn't find anything specifically wrong with me, other than being slightly dyslexic because I'm a lefty. But they didn't test for curiosity. Curiosity, to me, is about our connection with the world, with the universe. It's about seeing what's around that next coral head or what's around that next tree, and learning more not only about our environment but about ourselves.
我要忏悔 。 我对冒险活动很上瘾, 作为一个年轻男孩, 我宁可看窗户外面 鸟、树林、天空, 而不是盯着二维黑板, 时间在那里静止, 有时甚至终止。 我的老师认为我有点儿毛病, 因为我根本不在乎课堂。 他们并未发现我到底有那点不正常, 除了我有点阅读障碍,我是左撇子。 他们并没有检测好奇。 好奇,于我, 是关于我们与世界, 宇宙的联系。 有关那片珊瑚旁边有什么, 那棵树周边有什么, 了解我们的环境 以及我们自身。
Now, my dream of dreams, I want to go explore the oceans of Mars, but until we can go there, I think the oceans still hold quite a few secrets. As a matter of fact, if you take our planet as the oasis in space that it is and dissect it into a living space, the ocean represents over 3.4 billion cubic kilometers of volume, within which we've explored less than five percent. And I look at this, and I go, well, there are tools to go deeper, longer and further: submarines, ROVs, even Scuba diving. But if we're going to explore the final frontier on this planet, we need to live there. We need to build a log cabin, if you will, at the bottom of the sea.
现在,我梦到的梦想, 我想去探索火星上的海洋, 但在我们有能力到达那里之前, 我想海洋仍有 一些不为人知的秘密。 事实上, 如果你将我们的地球 视为太空中的绿洲 仔细分出宜居空间, 海洋占据了超过 34 亿 立方公里, 我们只探索了其不到 5%。 我看着这个,我想,嗯, 有机械工具能够探索地 更深、更长、更远: 潜艇、水下机器人,甚至是轻便潜水器。 但是,如果我们想要探索 地球上最后一篇未知土地, 我们就得住在那儿。 如果力所能及,要建造一座木屋, 在海洋底端。
And so there was a great curiosity in my soul when I went to go visit a TED [Prize winner] by the name of Dr. Sylvia Earle. Maybe you've heard of her. Two years ago, she was staked out at the last undersea marine laboratory to try and save it, to try and petition for us not to scrap it and bring it back on land. We've only had about a dozen or so scientific labs at the bottom of the sea. There's only one left in the world: it's nine miles offshore and 65 feet down. It's called Aquarius. Aquarius, in some fashion, is a dinosaur, an ancient robot chained to the bottom, this Leviathan. In other ways, it's a legacy. And so with that visit, I realized that my time is short if I wanted to experience what it was like to become an aquanaut.
我的大脑中迸发了强大的好奇, 当我去拜访一位 TED [大奖得主], 西尔维娅·厄尔博士的时候。 也许你听说过她。 两年前,她坚守在 最后一个海底潜艇研究室 想要保全它, 试着帮我们请愿, 不要拆掉它, 把它带回到陆地上面。 我们大约只有十来个 海底科学实验室。 这是世界上仅存的一个: 离岸 9 英里远 65 英尺深。 它叫水瓶座。 水瓶座,从某些角度看, 像个恐龙, 一个古老的机器人被 链子拴在海底, 这个利维坦。 (译注:圣经中的巨型海怪) 另一方面说,这是经典。 那次访问的经历让我意识到 我的时间不够了, 如果我想要体验 海底观察员的工作生活。
When we swam towards this after many moons of torture and two years of preparation, this habitat waiting to invite us was like a new home. And the point of going down to and living at this habitat was not to stay inside. It wasn't about living at something the size of a school bus. It was about giving us the luxury of time outside to wander, to explore, to understand more about this oceanic final frontier.
我们游向这个实验室 在历经了数月的艰苦训练 和长达两年的准备后, 这个海底栖息地 成了我的新住处。 深入海底并居住在那里 并不是为了住在里面。 我们并不是要住在校车大小的房屋里。 住在这里为我们争取了宝贵的时间, 让我们可以在海洋里穿梭、探索, 去了解更多关于海洋的边界。
We had megafauna come and visit us. This spotted eagle ray is a fairly common sight in the oceans. But why this is so important, why this picture is up, is because this particular animal brought his friends around, and instead of being the pelagic animals that they were, they started getting curious about us, these new strangers that were moving into the neighborhood, doing things with plankton. We were studying all sorts of animals and critters, and they got closer and closer to us, and because of the luxury of time, these animals, these residents of the coral reef, were starting to get used to us, and these pelagics that normal travel through stopped. This particular animal actually circled for 31 full days during our mission. So mission 31 wasn't so much about breaking records. It was about that human-ocean connection.
矩形海底生物会游到我们附近。 途中的燕魟是海洋中较常见的一种。 为什么这是重要的呢? 为什么要选择这张照片? 因为它将朋友们也一同带来了, 即使它们是海洋中的珍稀物种, 它们却开始对我们感到好奇, 这些新邻居的新面孔, 和浮游生物一起。 我们研究着不同种类的动物和奇怪生物, 而且它们与我们越来越近, 因为时间宽裕, 这些生物,住在珊瑚礁附近的居民, 开始习惯我们的存在, 这些时常穿梭于海底的 动物都停了下来。 这只特别的生物围着我们游来游去, 在我们执行海底勘探工作期间, 转了整整 31 天。 31 号任务并不是 为了要打破记录, 而是为了人类与海洋的连结。
Because of the luxury of time, we were able to study animals such as sharks and grouper in aggregations that we've never seen before. It's like seeing dogs and cats behaving well together. Even being able to commune with animals that are much larger than us, such as this endangered goliath grouper who only still resides in the Florida Keys. Of course, just like any neighbor, after a while, if they get tired, the goliath grouper barks at us, and this bark is so powerful that it actually stuns its prey before it aspirates it all within a split second. For us, it's just telling us to go back into the habitat and leave them alone.
我们有足够宽裕的时间 来研究动物, 像鲨鱼及石斑鱼群聚集在一起, 这种现象从未见过。 就像狗和猫能友好共处一样。 甚至能够和动物交流, 那些体型比我们大数倍的动物, 就像这个濒危伊氏石斑鱼, 仍然只栖息于佛罗里达群岛。 当然,就像所有邻居, 一阵子之后,如果它们累了, 伊氏石斑鱼就会冲着我们咆哮, 吼叫的声音非常大, 强大到能够镇晕猎物, 然后迅速将其吸入口中。 对我们, 只是告诉我们回去海底小屋, 不要打扰它们。
Now, this wasn't just about adventure. There was actually a serious note to it. We did a lot of science, and again, because of the luxury of time, we were able to do over three years of science in 31 days. In this particular case, we were using a PAM, or, let me just see if I can get this straight, a Pulse Amplitude Modulated Fluorometer. And our scientists from FIU, MIT, and from Northeastern were able to get a gauge for what coral reefs do when we're not around. The Pulse Amplitude Modulated Fluorometer, or PAM, gauges the fluorescence of corals as it pertains to pollutants in the water as well as climate change-related issues. We used all sorts of other cutting-edge tools, such as this sonde, or what I like to call the sponge proctologist, whereby the sonde itself tests for metabolism rates in what in this particular case is a barrel sponge, or the redwoods of the [ocean]. And this gives us a much better gauge of what's happening underwater with regard to climate change-related issues, and how the dynamics of that affect us here on land. And finally, we looked at predator-prey behavior. And predator-prey behavior is an interesting thing, because as we take away some of the predators on these coral reefs around the world, the prey, or the forage fish, act very differently. What we realized is not only do they stop taking care of the reef, darting in, grabbing a little bit of algae and going back into their homes, they start spreading out and disappearing from those particular coral reefs. Well, within that 31 days, we were able to generate over 10 scientific papers on each one of these topics.
那么这就不只是冒险而已, 这是一个严肃认真的研究。 因为时间充裕, 我们做了很多科学研究, 在 31 天的时间里, 我们做了通常需要 3 年的 科学研究。 这个研究中,我们使用了脉冲幅度调制, 让我用更直白的方法说明, 一个脉冲幅度调制荧光剂。 来自佛罗里达国际大学,麻省理工学院, 东北大学的科学家们 就能测量估算出珊瑚礁 在我们离开时的动态。 脉冲幅度调制荧光剂, 简称 PAM, 能够测量出珊瑚发出的荧光, 因为这与水中污染物质有关, 也与气候变化等相关问题有关。 我们使用最新研发出的仪器设备, 像是这个探测器,我更喜欢称之为 海绵的直肠科医师, 它可以检测海绵的新陈代谢率, 这张照片中,我们正在测试桶状海绵的代谢率, 桶状海绵也称作海里的红杉树。 这让我们能够更好地测量出 水面下发生了什么事, 理解当气候变化相关问题发生时, 其动态状况 是如何影响着陆地上的我们。 最后,我们还看到捕食者和被捕食者的行为。 捕食者和被捕食者的行为非常有趣, 因为我们拿走了一些 世界各地珊瑚礁群上的捕食者, 那些被捕食者,或饵料鱼, 与先前行为很大不同。 我们观察到 它们不仅会停止照顾珊瑚礁, 钻进去,抓一些藻类生物 然后回家, 它们还会开始四处散开来, 消失在这些特别的珊瑚礁群里。 在 31 天里, 我们完成了 10 篇分别有关这些实验的 不同题目的科研文章。
But the point of adventure is not only to learn, it's to be able to share that knowledge with the world, and with that, thanks to a couple of engineers at MIT, we were able to use a prototype camera called the Edgertronic to capture slow-motion video, up to 20,000 frames per second in a little box that's worth 3,000 dollars. It's available to every one of us. And that particular camera gives us an insight into what fairly common animals do but we can't even see it in the blink of an eye. Let me show you a quick video of what this camera does. You can see the silky bubble come out of our hard hats. It gives us an insight into some of the animals that we were sitting right next to for 31 days and never normally would have paid attention to, such as hermit crabs. Now, using a cutting-edge piece of technology that's not really meant for the oceans is not always easy. We sometimes had to put the camera upside down, cordon it back to the lab, and actually man the trigger from the lab itself. But what this gives us is the foresight to look at and analyze in scientific and engineering terms some of the most amazing behavior that the human eye just can't pick up, such as this manta shrimp trying to catch its prey, within about .3 seconds. That punch is as strong as a .22 caliber bullet, and if you ever try to catch a bullet in mid-flight with your eye, impossible. But now we can see things such as these Christmas tree worms pulling in and fanning out in a way that the eye just can't capture, or in this case, a fish throwing up grains of sand. This is an actual sailfin goby, and if you look at it in real time, it actually doesn't even show its fanning motion because it's so quick.
探险的意义不只在于学习了解, 还在于与世界分享知识, 感谢来自麻省理工的工程师们, 我们能够使用一种名叫 Edgertronic 的 原型照相机 来捕捉慢动作影像, 高达每秒 2 万帧, 就是这个小盒子, 价值 3 千美元。 我们人手一个。 这个特殊的相机帮助我们了解 那些常见生物日常行为, 那些我们用肉眼观察不到的事。 让我用这个简短的视频 展示这台相机是如何工作的。 你能看见那些细小的泡泡 从我们的头盔中冒出来。 它能让我们仔细观察 那些围绕我们身边生物的日常生活 长达 31 天, 这些生物是平常不会引起我们注意的, 比如,寄居蟹。 现在,使用这些 并不是专门为了海洋研究设计的 最新的高科技产品 并不太容易。 我们时常需要把相机倒过来放, 密封带回实验室, 并在实验室里 操纵触发器。 但这让我们能够 用科学的和工程学的方法 来查看并分析 一些肉眼无法观察仔细的 非常奇妙的生物行为, 例如这只濑尿虾, 正在抓捕猎物, 用时不到 0.3 秒。 它出钳击打的力量非常强大 就像 0.22 口径的子弹, 如果你试图用肉眼捕捉一颗子弹, 飞行中的子弹,那是不可能的。 但现在我们可以看到 像是这些圣诞树管虫 (有名大旋鳃虫) 收缩又成扇形散开, 肉眼是无法捕捉到这些的, 或者是这个例子, 一条鱼吐出沙砾。 这是四眼虾虎, 如果你只用肉眼观察, 甚至不会看到吐气的过程, 因为太快了。
One of the most precious gifts that we had underwater is that we had WiFi, and for 31 days straight we were able to connect with the world in real time from the bottom of the sea and share all of these experiences. Quite literally right there I am Skyping in the classroom with one of the six continents and some of the 70,000 students that we connected every single day to some of these experiences. As a matter of fact, I'm showing a picture that I took with my smartphone from underwater of a goliath grouper laying on the bottom. We had never seen that before.
我们在海底拥有的 最珍贵的礼物 是 wifi 网络, 31 天里,我们能够 在海底与世界实时连线 分享所有这些经验。 图片中展示的是 我在教室里视频连线, 与位于六大洲之一 约七万名学生连线, 每天都有这样经验分享的活动。 事实上,我在展示一张照片 那是我在水下用智能手机拍摄的 躺在海底的巨型石斑鱼。 我们从未看到过。
And I dream of the day that we have underwater cities, and maybe, just maybe, if we push the boundaries of adventure and knowledge, and we share that knowledge with others out there, we can solve all sorts of problems. My grandfather used to say, "People protect what they love." My father, "How can people protect what they don't understand?" And I've thought about this my whole life. Nothing is impossible. We need to dream, we need to be creative, and we all need to have an adventure in order to create miracles in the darkest of times. And whether it's about climate change or eradicating poverty or giving back to future generations what we've taken for granted, it's about adventure. And who knows, maybe there will be underwater cities, and maybe some of you will become the future aquanauts.
我梦想有一天 我们会有水下城市, 也许,仅仅是也许,如果我们推动 探险和知识的边界, 我们与外界分享知识, 我们就能解决各式各样众多问题。 我的祖父曾说, “人们保护自己热爱的东西。” 我的父亲说,“那人们要如何 保护那些他们不懂的东西呢?” 我一生都在思考这个问题。 没有什么是不可能的。 我们需要梦想,我们需要发挥创造力, 我们都需要探险, 为黑暗的时光创造奇迹。 不论它是关于气候变化, 还是消灭贫困, 或是把我们认为理所应当的 还给我们的后代, 一切都关于探险。 谁知道呢,也许未来会有水底城市, 也许在你们之中 就有未来的海底观察员。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)