The oceans cover some 70 percent of our planet. And I think Arthur C. Clarke probably had it right when he said that perhaps we ought to call our planet Planet Ocean. And the oceans are hugely productive, as you can see by the satellite image of photosynthesis, the production of new life. In fact, the oceans produce half of the new life every day on Earth as well as about half the oxygen that we breathe. In addition to that, it harbors a lot of the biodiversity on Earth, and much of it we don't know about. But I'll tell you some of that today. That also doesn't even get into the whole protein extraction that we do from the ocean. That's about 10 percent of our global needs and 100 percent of some island nations.
海洋覆蓋地球表面七成多。 而且我認為亞瑟·克拉克 極可能是對的 他說也許我們應該叫地球 「海行星」 海洋是非常具有生產力的, 就像你們可以在這個衛星圖看到的光合作用, 也就是生命新生。 事實上,地球每天的新生命超過一半是來自海洋, 海洋亦產出約我們吸進氧氣的一半。 此外,海洋中還包含很多各式各樣的生物, 且很多生物仍然是不為我們所知的。 但我今天會告訴你們其中的一部分。 那甚至不包括我們從海洋裡所做的整個 蛋白質萃取部份。 那大約是全球需求的百分之十, 且是某些海島國家需求的百分之百。
If you were to descend into the 95 percent of the biosphere that's livable, it would quickly become pitch black, interrupted only by pinpoints of light from bioluminescent organisms. And if you turn the lights on, you might periodically see spectacular organisms swim by, because those are the denizens of the deep, the things that live in the deep ocean. And eventually, the deep sea floor would come into view. This type of habitat covers more of the Earth's surface than all other habitats combined. And yet, we know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about this habitat, despite the fact that we have yet to extract a gram of food, a breath of oxygen or a drop of water from those bodies.
如果你深入 95%生物存活的地方, 你會馬上發現那裡一片漆黑, 只有一些從螢光生物身上 所發出的微弱光芒。 如果你把燈打開, 你有時也許可以看到一些很壯觀的生物游過, 因為那些是處在深處的居住者 屬於住在深海的生物。 最後,海底會進入眼簾。 這種棲地在地球表面的面積 比任何其它棲地加起來還多。 直到目前為止,我們瞭解月球和火星表面 比我們瞭解這種棲地還多。 即使我們仍未從那些星球上取得 任何一份食物、一口氧氣, 或是一滴水。
And so 10 years ago, an international program began called the Census of Marine Life, which set out to try and improve our understanding of life in the global oceans. It involved 17 different projects around the world. As you can see, these are the footprints of the different projects. And I hope you'll appreciate the level of global coverage that it managed to achieve. It all began when two scientists, Fred Grassle and Jesse Ausubel, met in Woods Hole, Massachusetts where both were guests at the famed oceanographic institute. And Fred was lamenting the state of marine biodiversity and the fact that it was in trouble and nothing was being done about it. Well, from that discussion grew this program that involved 2,700 scientists from more than 80 countries around the world who engaged in 540 ocean expeditions at a combined cost of 650 million dollars to study the distribution, diversity and abundance of life in the global ocean.
所以十年前, 一個叫作「海底生物調查」的全球性研究開始了, 這個研究試圖加深我們對 地球海洋生物的瞭解。 這個計畫包括了17個子計畫。 如你所見,這是各個計畫的分布圖。 我希望你們可以了解這個研究 涵蓋的範圍之廣。 這一切都從Fred Grassle和Jesse Ausubel這兩個科學家 在麻省海洋機構的Woods Hole 做客時相遇開始的, 當Fred正在感歎海洋生物 事實上已經面臨危機而且沒有任何實行的解決措施時。 這個計畫就是從那次討論開始實行 包含了來自全球超過 80個國家的2,700個科學家, 研究540個海域, 經費超過六億五千萬元, 來研究全球海裡生物的分布、 多樣性、和豐富性。
And so what did we find? We found spectacular new species, the most beautiful and visually stunning things everywhere we looked -- from the shoreline to the abyss, form microbes all the way up to fish and everything in between. And the limiting step here wasn't the unknown diversity of life, but rather the taxonomic specialists who can identify and catalog these species that became the limiting step. They, in fact, are an endangered species themselves. There are actually four to five new species described everyday for the oceans. And as I say, it could be a much larger number.
所以我們找到什麼呢? 我們發現許多令人嘆為觀止的新物種, 比我們看過的任何生物都更美麗驚艷。 從海岸線到深海, 包含從微生物一路到魚類等。 而這之中的限速步驟並不是未知的生物多樣性, 而是分類學家 試圖鑑定並分類這些物種, 這才是限速步驟。 他們,事實上,就是一種面臨絕種的物種。 每天事實上大約有四到五個新物種 在海洋中被發現。 如我所說的,還可以是個更大的數字。
Now, I come from Newfoundland in Canada -- It's an island off the east coast of that continent -- where we experienced one of the worst fishing disasters in human history. And so this photograph shows a small boy next to a codfish. It's around 1900. Now, when I was a boy of about his age, I would go out fishing with my grandfather and we would catch fish about half that size. And I thought that was the norm, because I had never seen fish like this. If you were to go out there today, 20 years after this fishery collapsed, if you could catch a fish, which would be a bit of a challenge, it would be half that size still. So what we're experiencing is something called shifting baselines. Our expectations of what the oceans can produce is something that we don't really appreciate because we haven't seen it in our lifetimes.
我來自加拿大的紐芬蘭, 那是一個位於大陸東邊海岸的島嶼, 也是我們的歷史上其中一個遭遇過 嚴重濫捕的地方。 可以看到這張照片有個小男孩在一條鱈魚旁邊。 大約是19世紀左右。 當我跟這個小男孩大概一樣大的時候, 我會跟我祖父去釣魚, 然後我們會抓到只有這張照片尺寸一半的魚。 而我當時認為那是很正常的, 因為我從來沒有看過這樣大的魚。 在漁業瓦解二十年後的今天,如果你再去釣魚, 如果你可以順利抓到一隻魚,這是有點挑戰的, 那隻魚的大小也會是我當時釣魚的一半。 所以我們正在經歷的是一個叫做變換底線的過程。 我們期待在海裡可以產生的東西 是一個我們無法真正體會的事情, 因為我們從未在我們的一生中看過。
Now most of us, and I would say me included, think that human exploitation of the oceans really only became very serious in the last 50 to, perhaps, 100 years or so. The census actually tried to look back in time, using every source of information they could get their hands on. And so anything from restaurant menus to monastery records to ships' logs to see what the oceans looked like. Because science data really goes back to, at best, World War II, for the most part. And so what they found, in fact, is that exploitation really began heavily with the Romans. And so at that time, of course, there was no refrigeration. So fishermen could only catch what they could either eat or sell that day. But the Romans developed salting. And with salting, it became possible to store fish and to transport it long distances. And so began industrial fishing.
現在大部份的人們,也包括我, 會認為人類對海洋的浩劫 大約是在過去50年、100年或更早 才開始嚴重起來的。 這個調查試圖利用所有能找到的資訊 來回溯過去的時間點。 因此他們從餐廳菜單 到修道院的船行紀錄, 來瞭解當時海洋的情形。 因為科學數據大部分至多回溯到 第二次世界大戰。 而他們發現事實上 從羅馬時期漁業濫捕就開始嚴重了。 在那個年代,冰箱還不存在。 所以漁人只會抓 他們當天可以賣掉或吃掉的量。 但羅馬人發明出醃漬法。 有了醃漬法, 存放及長途漁獲運輸變成可行了。 因此開啟了工業漁業。
And so these are the sorts of extrapolations that we have of what sort of loss we've had relative to pre-human impacts on the ocean. They range from 65 to 98 percent for these major groups of organisms, as shown in the dark blue bars. Now for those species the we managed to leave alone, that we protect -- for example, marine mammals in recent years and sea birds -- there is some recovery. So it's not all hopeless. But for the most part, we've gone from salting to exhausting.
這些是我們目前的推斷, 根據早期人類對海洋的衝擊 牽連到我們現在的損失。 他們將百分之65到98的受到危害的 主要生物族群 用深藍色長條顯示。 然後那些我們已經開始維護的物種, 以近年來的海洋哺乳動物和海鳥來說, 開始有復原的跡象。 所以也不是完全沒有希望。 但其他絕大部份,我們已經歷了大量醃漬到資源枯竭。
Now this other line of evidence is a really interesting one. It's from trophy fish caught off the coast of Florida. And so this is a photograph from the 1950s. I want you to notice the scale on the slide, because when you see the same picture from the 1980s, we see the fish are much smaller and we're also seeing a change in terms of the composition of those fish. By 2007, the catch was actually laughable in terms of the size for a trophy fish. But this is no laughing matter. The oceans have lost a lot of their productivity and we're responsible for it.
現在另一個證據是非常有趣的。 這是在佛羅里達海岸捕捉到的漁獲。 這是1950年代的照片。 我要你們注意旁邊的比例尺, 因為當我們看1980年代的相同照片時, 我們可以看到魚明顯地變小, 且我們也看到 魚的結構有些不同。 到了2007,這些漁獲的大小 已經有點可笑了。 但這並不是件好笑的事。 海洋已經喪失了很大部份的生產力, 且我們得為此負責。
So what's left? Actually quite a lot. There's a lot of exciting things, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about them. And I want to start with a bit on technology, because, of course, this is a TED Conference and you want to hear something on technology. So one of the tools that we use to sample the deep ocean are remotely operated vehicles. So these are tethered vehicles we lower down to the sea floor where they're our eyes and our hands for working on the sea bottom. So a couple of years ago, I was supposed to go on an oceanographic cruise and I couldn't go because of a scheduling conflict. But through a satellite link I was able to sit at my study at home with my dog curled up at my feet, a cup of tea in my hand, and I could tell the pilot, "I want a sample right there." And that's exactly what the pilot did for me. That's the sort of technology that's available today that really wasn't available even a decade ago. So it allows us to sample these amazing habitats that are very far from the surface and very far from light.
接下來談什麼?事實上還有很多可以聊。 而且我要來跟你們聊一點關於這些計畫的趣事。 我要從科技面來開始談, 因為這是TED會議, 你們自然會想要聽到一些關於科技的東西。 我們用來採集深海樣本 的其中一種工具是遙控汽車。 我們將這些綁在一起的運載工具降到海床, 讓他們成為我們在海底工作的雙眼和雙手。 像幾年前,我原本要去一趟海洋地質之旅, 但因為時間上調度的問題無法參加。 但透過一個衛星連結,我可以坐在我家書房繼續我的研究。 我的狗就盤在我的腳邊,手上還拿著一杯茶, 跟艦長說:「我要這裡的樣本。」 艦長就會完全照做。 這是現今才有的科技, 這些科技在十年前甚至還不存在。 所以這讓我們可以在這些離海面和光源 很遠卻令人驚艷的棲地 來採集樣本。
And so one of the tools that we can use to sample the oceans is acoustics, or sound waves. And the advantage of sound waves is that they actually pass well through water, unlike light. And so we can send out sound waves, they bounce off objects like fish and are reflected back. And so in this example, a census scientist took out two ships. One would send out sound waves that would bounce back. They would be received by a second ship, and that would give us very precise estimates, in this case, of 250 billion herring in a period of about a minute. And that's an area about the size of Manhattan Island. And to be able to do that is a tremendous fisheries tool, because knowing how many fish are there is really critical.
其中一個我們可以用來採集樣本的工具是 聲音,也就是聲波。 聲波的優點是 他們能輕易透過水傳聲, 不像光一樣。 所以我們可以發射聲波, 聲波會碰到像魚之類的生物反射回來。 所以在這個例子裡,一個調查員帶了兩艘船出去。 第一艘船會發射聲波 之後反射回來的聲波會被第二艘船接收, 這會給我們很精準的估計值,在這個例子中 兩千五百億隻鯡魚 在一分鐘內就被偵測出來 那大概有一個曼哈頓島這麼大。 能這麼做對漁業來說是很有用, 因為知道有多少魚是非常重要的。
We can also use satellite tags to track animals as they move through the oceans. And so for animals that come to the surface to breathe, such as this elephant seal, it's an opportunity to send data back to shore and tell us where exactly it is in the ocean. And so from that we can produce these tracks. For example, the dark blue shows you where the elephant seal moved in the north Pacific. Now I realize for those of you who are colorblind, this slide is not very helpful, but stick with me nonetheless.
我們也可以用衛星定位 來追蹤在海裡移動的動物。 也可用在那些會到水面上呼吸的動物, 例如這隻海象, 衛星定位可以將資料回傳給岸上 並且顯示牠在海裡的位置。 這可以讓我們用來繪製路線圖。 舉例來說,深藍色的點 告訴你這隻海象搬到北太平洋。 我知道對色盲的人來說,這張投影片並沒有很有用, 但還是跟著我聽下去。
For animals that don't surface, we have something called pop-up tags, which collect data about light and what time the sun rises and sets. And then at some period of time it pops up to the surface and, again, relays that data back to shore. Because GPS doesn't work under water. That's why we need these tools. And so from this we're able to identify these blue highways, these hot spots in the ocean, that should be real priority areas for ocean conservation.
對那些不到水面上的動物, 我們有一個叫做彈出標簽的東西, 它會收集光線的資料和日出日落的時間。 然後在某些時段, 它會彈上海面上,將這些資料傳回岸上。 因為GPS無法在水裡使用,所以我們才需要這些工具。 因此利用這些資訊,我們可以找出這些藍色路徑, 這些海底熱點, 應該是海洋保育 優先採取的地帶。
Now one of the other things that you may think about is that, when you go to the supermarket and you buy things, they're scanned. And so there's a barcode on that product that tells the computer exactly what the product is. Geneticists have developed a similar tool called genetic barcoding. And what barcoding does is use a specific gene called CO1 that's consistent within a species, but varies among species. And so what that means is we can unambiguously identify which species are which even if they look similar to each other, but may be biologically quite different.
另外一件你們可能會想到的是 當你們去超市買東西的時候,這些東西會經過掃描。 因為這些物品上有條碼, 會告訴電腦物品是什麼。 基因學家也發明了相似的工具叫做基因條碼。 這些條碼利用一個叫做 CO1的基因, 這個基因在同種類中是相同的,但在不同種類中卻不同。 這代表我們可以很清楚的分辨 不同的物種, 即使他們看起來很像, 但在生物性質上卻是很不同的。
Now one of the nicest examples I like to cite on this is the story of two young women, high school students in New York City, who worked with the census. They went out and collected fish from markets and from restaurants in New York City and they barcoded it. Well what they found was mislabeled fish. So for example, they found something which was sold as tuna, which is very valuable, was in fact tilapia, which is a much less valuable fish. They also found an endangered species sold as a common one. So barcoding allows us to know what we're working with and also what we're eating.
用其中一個我喜歡的例子來說, 一個在紐約市的兩個女高中生 與調查計畫合作的故事 他們去紐約市的魚市場和餐廳蒐集魚 然後掃描魚。 他們發現有很多被標錯名稱的魚。 舉例來說, 他們找到一些被當成很有價值的鮪魚販售, 但實際上卻是低於鮪魚價值很多的吳郭魚。 他們也有找到一個瀕臨絕種的種類 以很常見的物種拍賣。 所以條碼化可以讓我們瞭解我們是在研究 以及食用哪些物種。
The Ocean Biogeographic Information System is the database for all the census data. It's open access; you can all go in and download data as you wish. And it contains all the data from the census plus other data sets that people were willing to contribute. And so what you can do with that is to plot the distribution of species and where they occur in the oceans. What I've plotted up here is the data that we have on hand. This is where our sampling effort has concentrated. Now what you can see is we've sampled the area in the North Atlantic, in the North Sea in particular, and also the east coast of North America fairly well. That's the warm colors which show a well-sampled region. The cold colors, the blue and the black, show areas where we have almost no data. So even after a 10-year census, there are large areas that still remain unexplored.
海洋生物地理資訊系統 是用來儲存這些調查的資料庫。 他是開放性的,你們大家都可以去那邊下載你們想要的資料。 它包含了「海洋生物調查」的所有數據 加上其它人們願意貢獻的資料。 所以你們可以利用這些資料 來瞭解物種的分類和他們分布在海洋的位置。 這邊是我用我們現有的資料繪製的圖。 這是用我們主要集中心力的的採樣的地方。 你們可以看到 我們在北大西洋蒐集樣本, 主要在北海, 在北美洲東部海洋也蒐集到很多。 暖色系顯示樣本數很多的地區。 冷色系, 像是藍色和黑色, 代表我們幾乎沒有資料。 所以就算經過了十年的調查, 仍然有很多地區沒有被勘查過。
Now there are a group of scientists living in Texas, working in the Gulf of Mexico who decided really as a labor of love to pull together all the knowledge they could about biodiversity in the Gulf of Mexico. And so they put this together, a list of all the species, where they're known to occur, and it really seemed like a very esoteric, scientific type of exercise. But then, of course, there was the Deep Horizon oil spill. So all of a sudden, this labor of love for no obvious economic reason has become a critical piece of information in terms of how that system is going to recover, how long it will take and how the lawsuits and the multi-billion-dollar discussions that are going to happen in the coming years are likely to be resolved.
有一群在墨西哥海灣工作的德州科學家 成為工作狂熱者, 將他們所知道關於墨西哥海灣的 所有生物資訊統整。 所以他們整理出一張所有生物的清單, 上面標註他們出沒的地方 這看起來真的很深奧、純科學的活動。 但後來有了墨西哥灣漏油事故。 突然間,這份對工作的熱愛所產生的清單 在顯然不是經濟因素所產生的情況下 成為一個很重要的資訊, 像是這個系統要如何恢復,得花多久時間? 和這些訴訟的後續 以及在未來幾年好幾億的討論等 該如何解決?
So what did we find? Well, I could stand here for hours, but, of course, I'm not allowed to do that. But I will tell you some of my favorite discoveries from the census. So one of the things we discovered is where are the hot spots of diversity? Where do we find the most species of ocean life? And what we find if we plot up the well-known species is this sort of a distribution. And what we see is that for coastal tags, for those organisms that live near the shoreline, they're most diverse in the tropics. This is something we've actually known for a while, so it's not a real breakthrough.
所以我們發現什麼? 我可以站在這談這個談好幾個小時,但當然我不能這麼做。 但我要告訴你們一部分在這個調查中 我最喜歡的發現。 其中一件是我們發現哪裡是多生物的集中點? 我們在哪裡可以找到最多海洋物種? 所以當我們把熟知的物種繪製出來, 就會是像這樣的分佈。 所以我們看到的沿岸標籤, 是那些住在在沿岸附近的生物, 呈現在熱帶地區最多樣化的情況。 這是實際上我們已經知道一段時間的事了, 所以也不算是什麼驚人的發現。
What is really exciting though is that the oceanic tags, or the ones that live far from the coast, are actually more diverse at intermediate latitudes. This is the sort of data, again, that managers could use if they want to prioritize areas of the ocean that we need to conserve. You can do this on a global scale, but you can also do it on a regional scale. And that's why biodiversity data can be so valuable.
真正振奮人心的是 許多海洋標籤,或是說那些離海岸比較遠的生物, 其實在中緯度的地方比較多樣化。 這些資料可以讓管理者利用, 如果他們想要優先保育海洋中其中一個區域的話。 你可以以全球化保育,但也可以區域化保育。 這也是為什麼生物多樣性的資料這麼珍貴。
Now while a lot of the species we discovered in the census are things that are small and hard to see, that certainly wasn't always the case. For example, while it's hard to believe that a three kilogram lobster could elude scientists, it did until a few years ago when South African fishermen requested an export permit and scientists realized that this was something new to science. Similarly this Golden V kelp collected in Alaska just below the low water mark is probably a new species. Even though it's three meters long, it actually, again, eluded science. Now this guy, this bigfin squid, is seven meters in length. But to be fair, it lives in the deep waters of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so it was a lot harder to find. But there's still potential for discovery of big and exciting things. This particular shrimp, we've dubbed it the Jurassic shrimp, it's thought to have gone extinct 50 years ago -- at least it was, until the census discovered it was living and doing just fine off the coast of Australia. And it shows that the ocean, because of its vastness, can hide secrets for a very long time. So, Steven Spielberg, eat your heart out.
雖然我們在這個調查中發現的物種, 大多是很小且不容易看見的, 但並不是一直都是這樣。 舉例來說,雖然很難相信 有三公斤大的龍蝦可以躲過科學家的搜尋, 但直到幾年前 南美洲漁夫要求外銷許可時, 科學家才發現這個物種。 同樣的,這個金色V型海帶 是在阿拉斯加僅比水位低一點的地方 被發現的新物種。 儘管它有三公尺長, 但仍然沒有被科學家發現。 這個傢伙,大鰭魷魚,長約七公尺。 不過說實在的,它生存在大西洋中洋脊的深海, 所以當然更難被找到。 但仍然有機會能發現很重要且很有趣的東西的可能性。 這種蝦子,我們叫它侏羅蝦, 它被認定在50年前就絕種了, 直到最後被海洋生物調查發現 他們在澳洲海岸活得好好的。 這顯示海洋的無邊無際 可以長久隱藏許多未知的事物。 所以史蒂芬·史匹柏,別難過了。
If we look at distributions, in fact distributions change dramatically. And so one of the records that we had was this sooty shearwater, which undergoes these spectacular migrations all the way from New Zealand all the way up to Alaska and back again in search of endless summer as they complete their life cycles. We also talked about the White Shark Cafe. This is a location in the Pacific where white shark converge. We don't know why they converge there, we simply don't know. That's a question for the future.
如果我們看這些分佈圖,它事實上分佈轉變得很快。 我們其中一個紀錄顯示 灰鸌,經歷令人嘆為觀止的遷徙, 從紐西蘭一路上 飛到阿拉斯加再飛回來 就為了尋找永無止盡的夏天, 讓牠們完成牠們的生命週期。 另一個紀錄是有關於白鯊咖啡廳。 在太平洋有個地方是白鯊聚集的地方。 我們不知道為什麼牠們喜歡待在那,真的不知道。 這是留給未來的問題。
One of the things that we're taught in high school is that all animals require oxygen in order to survive. Now this little critter, it's only about half a millimeter in size, not terribly charismatic. But it was only discovered in the early 1980s. But the really interesting thing about it is that, a few years ago, census scientists discovered that this guy can thrive in oxygen-poor sediments in the deep Mediterranean Sea. So now they know that, in fact, animals can live without oxygen, at least some of them, and that they can adapt to even the harshest of conditions.
我們在高中曾學過 所有動物都需要氧氣才能存活。 這個小動物,只有半公釐長, 並不吸引人。 直到1980年代早期才被發現。 但非常有趣的是 幾年前,海洋生物調查的科學家發現 這傢伙可以在氧氣不足的 深地中海裡蓬勃成長 所以現在他們知道,事實上, 動物可以不靠氧氣生活,至少一部分不用, 且他們可以適應於最殘酷的環境。
If you were to suck all the water out of the ocean, this is what you'd be left behind with, and that's the biomass of life on the sea floor. Now what we see is huge biomass towards the poles and not much biomass in between. We found life in the extremes. And so there were new species that were found that live inside ice and help to support an ice-based food web.
如果你把海洋中的水都吸走, 會剩下這個, 這是在海床的生物質。 我們可以看到在極圈地帶有很大量的生物質量, 但在中間卻沒有那麼多。 我們在極地有找到生物跡象, 並發現新的品種 生存在冰中 成為食物鏈循環的一部分。
And we also found this spectacular yeti crab that lives near boiling hot hydrothermal vents at Easter Island. And this particular species really captured the public's attention. We also found the deepest vents known yet -- 5,000 meters -- the hottest vents at 407 degrees Celsius -- vents in the South Pacific and also in the Arctic where none had been found before. So even new environments are still within the domain of the discoverable.
我們也找到令人驚奇的雪蟹, 牠們可以在復活島附近的海底火山旁生存。 而這個特別的物種 引起大眾極大的注意力。 我們也發現目前所知最深的火山口有五千公尺深、 最熱的火山口高達攝氏407度、 在南太平洋和北極海發現了海底火山口, 而這些地方在之前從未被發現過。 所以就算是新的環境也會有新的發現
Now in terms of the unknowns, there are many. And I'm just going to summarize just a few of them very quickly for you. First of all, we might ask, how many fishes in the sea? We actually know the fishes better than we do any other group in the ocean other than marine mammals. And so we can actually extrapolate based on rates of discovery how many more species we're likely to discover. And from that, we actually calculate that we know about 16,500 marine species and there are probably another 1,000 to 4,000 left to go. So we've done pretty well. We've got about 75 percent of the fish, maybe as much as 90 percent. But the fishes, as I say, are the best known.
至於未知的事物仍不勝枚舉。 我現在僅很快地大略舉出其中一部份 給你們。 首先,我們可能會提到,海洋中有多少魚? 我們事實上對魚類的瞭解比海洋哺乳類動物 以外的種類瞭解得更多。 所以我們可以利用已發現的比率來推斷 我們可能還有多少物種等待發現。 從這之中我們可以計算出 大概已有16,500種海洋生物為我們所知 所以大約還有1,000到4,000種要找。 所以我們做得相當好了。 我們已經找到百分之75的魚, 也許已經找到九成了。 但魚類,如我說的,是我們最瞭解的。
So our level of knowledge is much less for other groups of organisms. Now this figure is actually based on a brand new paper that's going to come out in the journal PLoS Biology. And what is does is predict how many more species there are on land and in the ocean. And what they found is that they think that we know of about nine percent of the species in the ocean. That means 91 percent, even after the census, still remain to be discovered. And so that turns out to be about two million species once all is said and done. So we still have quite a lot of work to do in terms of unknowns.
所以我們對其他種類的了解程度低了很多。 這個圖表事實上是從一個即將要在 生物學期刊發表的新文章中取得的。 而這篇文章是在預測陸地和海洋中 總共有多少物種。 他們的結論是 他們認為我們大略知道海洋中百分之九的物種。 那代表就算(海洋生物調查)之後,還有91%的生物 持續等待被發現。 所以等全部都找到後 那大約會有兩百萬物種。 所以對於這些未知的東西, 我們還是有很多事情要做。
Now this bacterium is part of mats that are found off the coast of Chile. And these mats actually cover an area the size of Greece. And so this particular bacterium is actually visible to the naked eye. But you can imagine the biomass that represents. But the really intriguing thing about the microbes is just how diverse they are. A single drop of seawater could contain 160 different types of microbes. And the oceans themselves are thought potentially to contain as many as a billion different types. So that's really exciting. What are they all doing out there? We actually don't know.
這種細菌 是在智利海岸可以找到的生物墊的一部份。 而這些生物墊實際上可涵蓋一個希臘那麼大。 所以這一種細菌事實上是可以用肉眼看到的。 你們可以想像這樣的生物質量所代表的意義。 但最耐人尋味的是這些微生物 的多樣性。 一滴海水 可以包含160種不同的微生物。 而且光在海洋中 估計就有十億多種不同的微生物。 所以這很令人興奮。他們都在那裡做什麼呢? 我們並不清楚。
The most exciting thing, I would say, about this census is the role of global science. And so as we see in this image of light during the night, there are lots of areas of the Earth where human development is much greater and other areas where it's much less, but between them we see large dark areas of relatively unexplored ocean. The other point I'd like to make about this is that this ocean's interconnected. Marine organisms do not care about international boundaries; they move where they will. And so the importance then of global collaboration becomes all the more important.
對我來說,最振奮人心的是 這個調查是在扮演地球科學研究的角色。 所以我們從這個圖片可以看到晚上的光線圖, 在地球上有很多區域 發展的速度遠比 其它區域好, 但在這兩者中間還有一些黑暗的區塊, 即相對之下未被發掘的海洋。 而我想要討論的是 海洋是互相連結的。 海洋生物不並在乎國際間的界限, 他們隨心所欲。 因此國際合作 就非常得重要。
We've lost a lot of paradise. For example, these tuna that were once so abundant in the North Sea are now effectively gone. There were trawls taken in the deep sea in the Mediterranean, which collected more garbage than they did animals. And that's the deep sea, that's the environment that we consider to be among the most pristine left on Earth. And there are a lot of other pressures. Ocean acidification is a really big issue that people are concerned with, as well as ocean warming, and the effects they're going to have on coral reefs. On the scale of decades, in our lifetimes, we're going to see a lot of damage to coral reefs.
我們已失去很多仙境般的地方了。 舉例來說,在北海曾經很豐盛的鮪魚 現在已經沒了。 在地中海深海撒網 撈上岸的垃圾比動物還多。 且這還是在深海,那個我們認為在地球上 最原始的地方。 而且還有很多其他困擾。 海洋酸化是人們很關心的議題, 海洋暖化和對珊瑚礁的影響也令人關切。 在幾十年內,相當於我們的一生, 我們會看到珊瑚礁被大量得破壞。
And I could spend the rest of my time, which is getting very limited, going through this litany of concerns about the ocean, but I want to end on a more positive note. And so the grand challenge then is to try and make sure that we preserve what's left, because there is still spectacular beauty. And the oceans are so productive, there's so much going on in there that's of relevance to humans that we really need to, even from a selfish perspective, try to do better than we have in the past. So we need to recognize those hot spots and do our best to protect them.
我大可用我最後的一些時間 來嘮叨一連串對海洋的保護, 但我想要用一個更正面的方式結束。 目前最大的挑戰是 試著保護我們僅有的事物, 因為他們仍然令人嘆為觀止。 且海洋是非常豐饒的, 那裡有太多跟人類息息相關的生命, 我們真的需要,即使是以自私為出發點, 也盡可能做得比以前更好。 所以我們需要找出這些生物熱點, 並盡我們所能來保護他們。
When we look at pictures like this, they take our breath away, in addition to helping to give us breath by the oxygen that the oceans provide. Census scientists worked in the rain, they worked in the cold, they worked under water and they worked above water trying to illuminate the wondrous discovery, the still vast unknown, the spectacular adaptations that we see in ocean life. So whether you're a yak herder living in the mountains of Chile, whether you're a stockbroker in New York City or whether you're a TEDster living in Edinburgh, the oceans matter. And as the oceans go so shall we.
當我們看到這些美麗得令人無法呼吸的圖片時, 海洋還額外提供 給我們呼吸的氧氣。 調查科學家無論是在雨中工作、在嚴寒中工作、 在海底工作還是在海面上工作, 都盡力發現這些不可思議的事物, 儘管大部份仍是未知 以及海洋生物驚人的適應能力。 所以無論你是住在智利山上的犛牛牧人, 還是紐約市的股票經紀人, 或是住在愛丁堡的收看TED的人, 海洋對你們都是很重要的。 所以我們應該與海洋同進退。
Thanks for listening.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)