The first time I cried underwater was in 2008, the island of Curaçao, way down in the southern Caribbean. It's beautiful there. I was studying these corals for my PhD, and after days and days of diving on the same reef, I had gotten to know them as individuals. I had made friends with coral colonies -- totally a normal thing to do. Then, Hurricane Omar smashed them apart and ripped off their skin, leaving little bits of wounded tissue that would have a hard time healing, and big patches of dead skeleton that would get overgrown by algae. When I saw this damage for the first time, stretching all the way down the reef, I sunk onto the sand in my scuba gear and I cried. If a coral could die that fast, how could a reef ever survive? And why was I making it my job to try to fight for them?
我第一次在海底哭泣 是在2008年, 在库拉索岛, 加勒比海南边。 那里很美。 我当时念博士,研究珊瑚礁, 日复一日地从同一处 珊瑚礁潜水下去, 我看它们就像一个个人一样。 我跟珊瑚礁群做了朋友—— 完全正常的事情。 后来,Omar飓风把它们撕得 四分五裂,脱了层皮, 只留下一点点残缺的珊瑚组织 需要漫长的时间休养生息, 而死亡的珊瑚礁的骨骼 大片大片的被海藻覆盖。 当我第一次看到这样的惨状, 一直蔓延到珊瑚礁底部, 潜水服里的我坐在泥沙里 哭了起来。 如果珊瑚死的这么突然, 这座珊瑚礁何以存活? 那么,为什么我要以此为 工作目标,为它们努力?
I never heard another scientist tell that kind of story until last year. A scientist in Guam wrote, "I cried right into my mask," seeing the damage on the reefs. Then a scientist in Australia wrote, "I showed my students the results of our coral surveys, and we wept." Crying about corals is having a moment, guys.
我从未听到另一个科学家 讲述类似的故事 直到去年。 一位关岛的科学家写到, “我在我的防护罩里哭了起来,” 当他看到珊瑚礁遭受的破坏时。 接着一位澳大利亚的科学家写到, “我向我的学生展示了 我们珊瑚调查的结果, 我们都哭泣了。” 伙计们,为珊瑚哭泣 正是时候。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And that's because reefs in the Pacific are losing corals faster than we've ever seen before. Because of climate change, the water is so hot for so long in the summers, that these animals can't function normally. They're spitting out the colored algae that lives in their skin, and the clear bleached tissue that's left usually starves to death and then rots away. Then the skeletons are overgrown by algae.
这是因为太平洋的珊瑚礁 覆盖表面的珊瑚正在以我们 从未见过的速度消失。 因为气候变化, 夏季的水温持续了 太长时间的高温, 导致这些动物(珊瑚) 无法正常工作。 它们吐出位于它们皮肤 表面的有色藻类, 留下来的白化后的组织 往往会饥饿而死 然后被海水冲走。 然后珊瑚骨架会被藻类占据。
This is happening over an unbelievable scale. The Northern Great Barrier Reef lost two-thirds of its corals last year over a distance of hundreds of miles, then bleached again this year, and the bleaching stretched further south. Reefs in the Pacific are in a nosedive right now, and no one knows how bad it's going to get, except ... over in the Caribbean where I work, we've already been through the nosedive. Reefs there have suffered through centuries of intense human abuse. We kind of already know how the story goes. And we might be able to help predict what happens next.
这一切正在以令人 无法相信的速度发生着。 北方的大堡礁去年有 三分之二的珊瑚死去, 蔓延数百英里, 今年又一次出现了白化, 并且白化现象向更南方延续。 太平洋的珊瑚礁的死亡速度 正在加快, 现在没有人知道到底 会发展到多坏的程度。 除了… 在我工作的加勒比海区域, 我们已经经历了这种加速。 珊瑚礁已经忍受了数百年 人类的各种蹂躏。 我们差不多已经知道 事态会如何发展。 并且我们大概能够预测 下一步会发生什么。
Let's consult a graph. Since the invention of scuba, scientists have measured the amount of coral on the seafloor, and how it's changed through time. And after centuries of ratcheting human pressure, Caribbean reefs met one of three fates. Some reefs lost their corals very quickly. Some reefs lost their corals more slowly, but kind of ended up in the same place. OK, so far this is not going very well. But some reefs in the Caribbean -- the ones best protected and the ones a little further from humans -- they managed to hold onto their corals. Give us a challenge. And, we almost never saw a reef hit zero.
让我们画一张图。 自从潜水器发明, 科学家就已经成功的 描绘了海床上的珊瑚礁分布, 以及它们随时间的变化趋势。 在经历了几个世纪人类 破坏的棘轮效应后, 加勒比珊瑚礁面临了三种命运。 有的珊瑚礁上的珊瑚很快就没了。 有些珊瑚礁上珊瑚的死亡速度慢一点, 但是基本上也消失殆尽。 好吧,目前为止事情都不算好。 但是加勒比的有些珊瑚礁—— 受到良好保护 受到人类的 多一点的保护—— 它们成功的留住了珊瑚。 给了我们一个挑战。 而且,我们很少看到珊瑚礁上珊瑚一点不剩。
The second time I cried underwater was on the north shore of Curaçao, 2011. It was the calmest day of the year, but it's always pretty sketchy diving there. My boyfriend and I swam against the waves. I watched my compass so we could find our way back out, and he watched for sharks, and after 20 minutes of swimming that felt like an hour, we finally dropped down to the reef, and I was so shocked, and I was so happy that my eyes filled with tears. There were corals 1,000 years old lined up one after another. They had survived the entire history of European colonialism in the Caribbean, and for centuries before that.
我第二次在水下哭泣 是2011年在库拉索岛的北岸。 在一个风平浪静的日子, 不过在那里潜水 一直是非常草率的。 我和男友逆着海浪游着。 我负责看着罗盘 以确保我们能回来, 他负责看有没有鲨鱼, 经过了20分钟的游泳, 感觉像游了一个小时, 我们终于下潜到了珊瑚礁, 我被震惊了, 我高兴到 泪水在我的眼睛里打转。 那些活了一千年之久的珊瑚, 一个一个连成一片。 它们在加勒比海经历了欧洲 大殖民时期并活了下来, 在那之前已经活了几个世纪。
I never knew what a coral could do when it was given a chance to thrive. The truth is that even as we lose so many corals, even as we go through this massive coral die-off, some reefs will survive. Some will be ragged on the edge, some will be beautiful. And by protecting shorelines and giving us food to eat and supporting tourism, they will still be worth billions and billions of dollars a year. The best time to protect a reef was 50 years ago, but the second-best time is right now. Even as we go through bleaching events, more frequent and in more places, some corals will be able to recover.
我永远不知道珊瑚生命力多旺盛 直到它们有了一个繁荣的机会。 真相是即使我们 损失如此多的珊瑚, 甚至像我们正在经历的 如此大面积的珊瑚死亡, 会有一些珊瑚重新繁荣起来。 有些残喘的活在边边角角, 有些会非常美丽。 并且保护海岸线还能够 增加渔业资源, 促进旅游业发展, 依然能够带来每年 数十亿的财富。 保护珊瑚礁最好的时间 是在50年前, 而第二个最佳时刻就是现在。 即使我们已经经历了白化事件, 即使面积更广,更加频繁, 有些珊瑚是可以恢复的。
We had a bleaching event in 2010 in the Caribbean that took off big patches of skin on boulder corals like these. This coral lost half of its skin. But if you look at the side of this coral a few years later, this coral is actually healthy again. It's doing what a healthy coral does. It's making copies of its polyps, it's fighting back the algae and it's reclaiming its territory. If a few polyps survive, a coral can regrow; it just needs time and protection and a reasonable temperature. Some corals can regrow in 10 years -- others take a lot longer. But the more stresses we take off them locally -- things like overfishing, sewage pollution, fertilizer pollution, dredging, coastal construction -- the better they can hang on as we stabilize the climate, and the faster they can regrow.
加勒比海在2010年 也经历了白化事件, 当时就像这样大片大片的 珊瑚礁表面被剥离了。 一般的珊瑚表面没有了。 但是如果你在几年之后 观察同一处珊瑚, 珊瑚实际上重新恢复了健康。 它像正常的珊瑚礁一样。 它复制自己的息肉, 它向藻类回击, 重新夺回自己的领地。 如果有少量息肉存活, 一片珊瑚就可以再生; 它仅仅需要时间、适当的保护 以及合理的海水温度。 有些珊瑚可以在10年内再生—— 其它的会稍微长一点。 但是我们在珊瑚礁周边 给珊瑚礁的压力—— 像是过度捕捞、生活污水 农业肥料污染等, 清淤工程、海岸建设—— 当我们将气候稳定后 这些问题处理的愈好, 珊瑚的恢复速度就越快。
And as we go through the long, tough and necessary process of stabilizing the climate of planet Earth, some new corals will still be born. This is what I study in my research. We try to understand how corals make babies, and how those babies find their way to the reef, and we invent new methods to help them survive those early, fragile life stages. One of my favorite coral babies of all time showed up right after Hurricane Omar. It's the same species I was studying before the storm, but you almost never see babies of this species -- it's really rare. This is actually an endangered species. In this photo, this little baby coral, this little circle of polyps, is a few years old. Like its cousins that bleach, it's fighting back the algae. And like its cousins on the north shore, it's aiming to live for 1,000 years.
在我们完成这个漫长、 艰难而又必需的目标时 也就是让地球的 气候恢复稳定, 一些新的珊瑚会继续诞生。 这是我的研究内容。 我们尝试理解珊瑚 如何产生小珊瑚, 以及这些小宝宝如何能够 寻找到珊瑚礁, 然后我们发明新的方法 帮助他们存活, 挺过生命初期的脆弱阶段。 我最喜欢的 珊瑚宝宝 是Omar飓风之后出现的一个。 它跟我在飓风之前研究的 珊瑚是同一种类, 但是你可能从来不会 看到这种品种的珊瑚宝宝—— 非常罕见。 实际上这是个濒危物种了。 照片里这个珊瑚小宝宝, 这小小的圆形触手, 只有几岁大。 像它已经白化的兄弟一样, 它正在回击藻类。 同时也跟它在北岸的表亲类似, 它能够活一千年以上。
What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses.
这个世界上,这片海洋里 发生的事情 改变了我们的时间观念。 我们可能在短期内 极端悲观, 为失去的悲痛, 而事实也正是如此。 但是我们始终哦可以在 长远上保持乐观, 而我们始终可以保持雄心壮志 努力去拼搏, 去要求我们的政府, 去信任这个星球。 珊瑚已经在这个地球上 生活了上亿年。 它们从恐龙大灭绝时代 存活了下来。 它们都不是善茬儿。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we.
一片珊瑚可以经历巨大的创伤 然后完全的恢复, 只要给它一个休养生息的机会 和足够的保护措施。 珊瑚从来都是善于 打持久战的。 现在我们也需要。
Thanks very much.
非常感谢
(Applause)
(掌声)