I'm an underwater explorer, more specifically a cave diver.
我是水下探險員 更具體地說是洞穴潛水員
I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a little kid, but growing up in Canada as a young girl, that wasn't really available to me. But as it turns out, we know a lot more about space than we do about the underground waterways coursing through our planet, the very lifeblood of Mother Earth. So I decided to do something that was even more remarkable. Instead of exploring outer space, I wanted to explore the wonders of inner space.
當我還是小孩,我原本想成為太空人 以一個在加拿大成長的年輕女孩 這實在遙不可及 其實,我們了解外太空 比了解流經我們星球的 地底下水道還要多 而這正是地球的命脈 所以我決定做一些更卓越的事情 沒去外太空探險 我反而去探索奇妙的地表深處
Now, a lot of people will tell you that cave diving is perhaps one of the most dangerous endeavors. I mean, imagine yourself here in this room, if you were suddenly plunged into blackness, with your only job to find the exit, sometimes swimming through these large spaces, and at other times crawling beneath the seats, following a thin guideline, just waiting for the life support to provide your very next breath. Well, that's my workplace.
現在許多人會告訴你 洞穴潛水可能是最危險的冒險之一 我是說想像你自己 在現在這個房間裡 如果你突然間陷入黑暗中 你所能做的就是找到出口 有時要游過這些大空間 又有時得爬過座位底下 沿著一條指示細繩 等著維生裝備來供應你下一口氣 這就是我的工作場所
But what I want to teach you today is that our world is not one big solid rock. It's a whole lot more like a sponge. I can swim through a lot of the pores in our earth's sponge, but where I can't, other life-forms and other materials can make that journey without me. And my voice is the one that's going to teach you about the inside of Mother Earth.
今天我要告訴你的就是 我們的世界不是一個大的實心岩石 它比較像一個海綿 我可以在這個地球大海綿的孔隙中暢游 在我無法去的地方 有其他的生物及物質可到達那裡 而我將會教導你認識 有關地球內部
There was no guidebook available to me when I decided to be the first person to cave dive inside Antarctic icebergs. In 2000, this was the largest moving object on the planet. It calved off the Ross Ice Shelf, and we went down there to explore ice edge ecology and search for life-forms beneath the ice.
當我決定成為南極冰山的首位洞穴 潛水員時,並沒有可供我參考的手冊 在 2000 年,這冰山是 世界最大的移動物體 它是從 “羅斯冰架” 崩解出來的 我們就是在它底下探索冰緣生態 以及搜尋在冰下的生物
We use a technology called rebreathers. It's an awful lot like the same technology that is used for space walks. This technology enables us to go deeper than we could've imagined even 10 years ago. We use exotic gases, and we can make missions even up to 20 hours long underwater.
我們用一種叫「再生式氧氣系統」的技術 這和使用在太空漫步的技術幾乎相同 這技術讓我們可以潛入 比十年前能想像的更深處 我們使用新型的氣體 讓我們可以在水底長達 20 小時執行任務
I work with biologists. It turns out that caves are repositories of amazing life-forms, species that we never knew existed before. Many of these life-forms live in unusual ways. They have no pigment and no eyes in many cases, and these animals are also extremely long-lived. In fact, animals swimming in these caves today are identical in the fossil record that predates the extinction of the dinosaurs. So imagine that: these are like little swimming dinosaurs. What can they teach us about evolution and survival? When we look at an animal like this remipede swimming in the jar, he has giant fangs with venom. He can actually attack something 40 times his size and kill it. If he were the size of a cat, he'd be the most dangerous thing on our planet. And these animals live in remarkably beautiful places, and in some cases, caves like this, that are very young, yet the animals are ancient. How did they get there?
我和生物學家一起工作 我們發現這些洞穴是珍奇生物的寶庫 有我們以前不知道存在的物種 這裡的許多生物以特別的方式生存 牠們很多是沒有色素及沒有眼睛 而且這些動物也非常長壽 事實上,現在在這些洞穴裡游動的動物 和恐龍滅絕之前 這些動物所留下的化石相同 所以想像一下:這些就像在游泳的小恐龍 在演化和生存方面, 它們能教我們什麼呢? 我們看這個在罐裡游的槳足類動物 牠具有劇毒的大毒牙 可以攻擊並殺死比牠大 40 倍的生物 如果牠像貓那麼大 牠將是地球上最危險的生物 而這些動物生活在這些極為美麗的地方 有些洞穴 ─像這個─ 非常年輕 但存在這古老的動物 牠們是怎麼來到那裡的?
I also work with physicists, and they're interested oftentimes in global climate change. They can take rocks within the caves, and they can slice them and look at the layers within with rocks, much like the rings of a tree, and they can count back in history and learn about the climate on our planet at very different times. The red that you see in this photograph is actually dust from the Sahara Desert. So it's been picked up by wind, blown across the Atlantic Ocean. It's rained down in this case on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. It soaks in through the ground and deposits itself in the rocks within these caves. And when we look back in the layers of these rocks, we can find times when the climate was very, very dry on earth, and we can go back many hundreds of thousands of years.
我也和自然科學家一起工作 他們通常對全球氣候的改變有興趣 他們從洞穴中的岩石取樣 然後將它們切成薄片 觀察岩石裡的分層 非常像樹的年輪 他們可從歷史回溯 而得知地球在不同時期的氣候 從這張圖片你看到的紅色部份 實際上是來自撒哈拉沙漠的沙塵 它曾隨風揚起並飄過大西洋 在巴哈馬的阿巴科島隨雨落下 滲入地面 然後沉積在這些洞穴的岩石裡 我們根據這些岩石的分層來回頭看 發現當時的地球氣候非常非常地乾燥 而且我們能回溯到幾十萬年以前
Paleoclimatologists are also interested in where the sea level stands were at other times on earth. Here in Bermuda, my team and I embarked on the deepest manned dives ever conducted in the region, and we were looking for places where the sea level used to lap up against the shoreline, many hundreds of feet below current levels.
古氣候學家也對於 地球在不同時期海平面的位置有興趣 在百慕達,我和我的隊友從事 這區域有史以來最深的潛水 我們在尋找 過去鄰近海岸線的海平面位置 就在現在海平面以下數百呎的地方
I also get to work with paleontologists and archaeologists. In places like Mexico, in the Bahamas, and even in Cuba, we're looking at cultural remains and also human remains in caves, and they tell us a lot about some of the earliest inhabitants of these regions.
我也會與古生物學家 及考古學家一起工作 像在墨西哥、巴哈馬,甚至古巴 我們查看了洞穴裡文化及人類的遺跡 讓我們知道許多 有關這些區域最早的居民
But my very favorite project of all was over 15 years ago, when I was a part of the team that made the very first accurate, three-dimensional map of a subterranean surface. This device that I'm driving through the cave was actually creating a three-dimensional model as we drove it. We also used ultra low frequency radio to broadcast back to the surface our exact position within the cave. So I swam under houses and businesses and bowling alleys and golf courses, and even under a Sonny's BBQ Restaurant,
但其中我最喜愛的研究計畫 是十五多年前 當時我是成員之一 這個團隊是在製作 最早的精確 3D 立體地表下地圖 這個我駕駛通過洞穴的儀器 實際上它於我們駕駛時 就邊畫一個 3D 立體模型 我們也利用超低頻無線電 向在地面的人回報我們 在洞穴裡確切的位置 所以我游過了民宅、商家、 保齡球道及高爾夫球場 甚至 Sonny 燒烤店的下面
Pretty remarkable, and what that taught me was that everything we do on the surface of our earth will be returned to us to drink. Our water planet is not just rivers, lakes and oceans, but it's this vast network of groundwater that knits us all together. It's a shared resource from which we all drink. And when we can understand our human connections with our groundwater and all of our water resources on this planet, then we'll be working on the problem that's probably the most important issue of this century.
很了不起吧!這一切給我的啟示 是我們加諸地球表面的任何東西 都會回歸給我們飲用 我們這充滿水的星球不只是 河流、湖泊及海洋而已 而是廣大的地下水網絡 將我們緊密地結合在一起 它是一個共享資源 我們都飲用它 當我們能了解人類與 這個星球的地下水 和所有水資源的關連性 那麼我們將努力解決這個問題 而且這可能是本世紀最重要的議題
So I never got to be that astronaut that I always wanted to be, but this mapping device, designed by Dr. Bill Stone, will be. It's actually morphed. It's now a self-swimming autonomous robot, artificially intelligent, and its ultimate goal is to go to Jupiter's moon Europa and explore oceans beneath the frozen surface of that body.
所以我沒有成為我一直想要當的太空人 但是這個由比爾史東博士 設計的繪圖裝置,會! 事實上,它被修改過 它現在是一個會 自己游泳的自動化機器人 具有人工智慧 它的終極目標是到木星的衛星 ─ Europa / 歐羅巴 探索該處冰涷地表下的海洋
And that's pretty amazing.
這實在是非常了不起!
(Applause)
(鼓掌)