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?
我第一次在水底哭 是 2008 年的時候, 我在古拉索島, 在遙遠的加勒比海南端。 那邊很美。 當時我在攻讀博士研究珊瑚, 日復一日潛水到同一塊礁上, 讓我對它們都瞭若指掌。 我和珊瑚群交朋友── 這可一點也不奇怪。 後來奧馬爾颶風讓牠們 四分五裂、體無完膚, 留下一丁點受了傷的組織, 得花時間辛苦療養, 大片死亡的骨架上會長滿水藻。 第一次看到災情 遍及珊瑚礁深處的時候, 穿著潛水肺裝站在沙上的我 哭了。 如果珊瑚死的速度這麼快, 礁怎麼能撐得過來? 而我又為什麼要試圖為它們奮戰?
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.
直到去年我才聽到其他科學家說 這類的故事。 一位在關島的科學家寫信給我: 「我在面罩裡哭了,」 因為我看到了那些珊瑚礁的傷痕。 另一位澳洲科學家寫: 「我讓學生看我們研究珊瑚的結果, 大家都落淚了。」 各位,為珊瑚哭泣現在正是時候。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
那是因為太平洋的礁 以前所未有的速度流失珊瑚。 因為氣候變遷, 海水在夏天太熱太久, 以致於這些動物無法正常運作。 牠們吐出住在牠們身上的有色海藻, 而留下的白化組織通常會餓死, 然後腐爛。 接著骨架上就會長滿海藻。
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.
這種情況以不可思議的程度 一直在發生。 北大堡礁去年失去三分之二的珊瑚, 總長好幾百哩, 今年又再度發生白化, 而且蔓延到南部了。 太平洋珊瑚礁的情況一落千丈, 沒人知道之後會多慘, 除了…… 我工作的地方加勒比海, 我們已經撐過谷底。 那裡的珊瑚礁百年來 飽受人類摧殘。 我們大概知道 故事會怎麼發展下去。 我們也許可以協助預測 下一步會發生什麼事。
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.
我們來看個圖表。 自從潛水肺發明之後, 科學家測量海底珊瑚數量, 以及日後的變化。 經過幾個世紀 日益加遽的人類壓力, 加勒比海珊瑚礁面臨了三種命運: 有些礁快速失去珊瑚; 有些礁失去珊瑚的速度慢一點, 但結局差不多一樣。 到目前為止不太樂觀。 但有些加勒比海珊瑚礁── 被保護得最好的那一些, 還有離人類比較遠的那一些, 它們順利保住珊瑚。 這帶給了我們挑戰。 而且我們幾乎沒見過 一塊珊瑚礁片甲不留。
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.
第二次我在水底哭, 是 2011 年在古拉索島北岸。 那是一年之中最平靜的一天, 但在那邊潛水總是很危險。 我男友和我游向海浪。 我確認指南針, 之後才能找得到回頭路, 他在觀察看有沒有鯊魚, 游了二十分鐘之後, 感覺就像游了一小時, 我們終於落在珊瑚礁上, 我超驚訝, 而且超開心, 讓我熱淚盈眶。 上千年的珊瑚在那裡 一個挨著一個。 牠們從加勒比海 整個歐洲殖民主義的 歷史中倖存下來, 而且在那之前也活了幾個世紀。
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.
我從來不知道珊瑚有機會 成長茁壯時,牠能做什麼。 事實是即使我們失去這麼多珊瑚, 即使我們經歷了大量珊瑚相繼死去, 有些珊瑚還是會活下來。 有些邊緣會不平整, 有些會很美。 珊瑚透過保護海岸線、 供給我們食物 和協助觀光業, 未來每年都還是會 提供千百億的價值。 保護珊瑚礁最好的時機點 是在五十年前, 第二次則是現在。 即使我們經歷的白化事件 越來越頻繁也出現在更多地方, 有些珊瑚還是能復原。
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 發生過白化事件, 造成巨礫珊瑚的表層 像這樣大面積剝落。 這個珊瑚的表面掉了一半。 但幾年後,如果你看牠的側邊, 牠又變健康了。 牠會跟健康珊瑚做一樣的事。 牠會複製珊瑚蟲、 擊退海藻、 收復牠的領土。 如果有些珊瑚蟲活下來, 珊瑚可以重生; 牠要的只是時間、 保護和合理的溫度。 有些珊瑚可以在十年內復活, 有些要很久。 只要我們在當地減輕牠們越多壓力, 像是過度捕撈、 污水污染、肥料污染、 拖撈網、海岸工程等, 牠們就能在我們穩定氣候時撐下來, 也就能更快重生。
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.
我們在採取漫長、艱辛和必要的程序 來穩定地球氣候的同時, 部分新珊瑚還會繼續誕生。 這是我的研究。 我們試著了解珊瑚怎麼生小孩, 還有這些小孩怎麼找到珊瑚礁, 我們發明了一種方法, 協助牠們在生命 早期脆弱的階段中存活下來。 我一直以來最愛的珊瑚寶寶 在奧馬爾颶風來襲後出現。 那和我在風暴前研究的是同一種, 但一般幾乎看不到這一種的寶寶, 因為牠們真的非常稀有。 牠們真的是瀕危物種。 在這張照片裡,這個小珊瑚寶寶, 這一小團珊瑚蟲, 有幾歲大。 牠們像白化的表親一樣 擊退海藻。 像牠們的在北岸的表親, 打算要活一千年。
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.
世界上和海裡發生的事, 會改變我們時程。 短期內我們可能會非常悲觀, 哀悼我們失去的 和我們過去視為理所當然的一切。 但長期來看我們還是能保持樂觀, 我們還是可以對我們要爭取的, 以及對政府和地球的期望 懷有雄心壯志。 珊瑚已經在地球上生存數十億年。 牠們在恐龍絕跡的時候活了下來。 牠們是壞蛋。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
一個珊瑚能在經歷 重大創傷後完全復原, 只要牠有機會並且得到保護。 珊瑚一直都打長久戰, 現在我們也是。
Thanks very much.
非常感謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)