I'd like to start tonight by something completely different, asking you to join me by stepping off the land and jumping into the open ocean for a moment. 90 percent of the living space on the planet is in the open ocean, and it's where life -- the title of our seminar tonight -- it's where life began. And it's a lively and a lovely place, but we're rapidly changing the oceans with our -- not only with our overfishing, our irresponsible fishing, our adding of pollutants like fertilizer from our cropland, but also, most recently, with climate change, and Steve Schneider, I'm sure, will be going into greater detail on this. Now, as we continue to tinker with the oceans, more and more reports are predicting that the kinds of seas that we're creating will be conducive to low-energy type of animals, like jellyfish and bacteria. And this might be the kind of seas we're headed for.
今晚,我想以一种截然不同的方式作为开始, 请你们和我一起暂时离开陆地, 跳到广阔的大洋中。 地球生物圈90%的空间在大洋中, 而那就是生命——我们今晚研讨会的主题——那是生命开始的地方。 这是一个充满活力的可爱的地方, 但却已经发生了巨大的变化—— 不仅仅是因为我们的过度捕捞,不负责任地捕鱼, 以及农田肥料产生的污染, 还有,最近以来,气候变化的威胁。 而史蒂夫·施耐德,我肯定,他将就这个问题做更详细的解读。 现在,如果我们继续这样胡乱地“修补”海洋, 越来越多的报告预言,我们正在使海洋 变得更适合低能量类型的动物,如水母和细菌。 这也许就是我们将要面对的海洋。
Now jellyfish are strangely hypnotic and beautiful, and you'll see lots of gorgeous ones at the aquarium on Friday, but they sting like hell, and jellyfish sushi and sashimi is just not going to fill you up. About 100 grams of jellyfish equals four calories. So it may be good for the waistline, but it probably won't keep you satiated for very long. And a sea that's just filled and teeming with jellyfish isn't very good for all the other creatures that live in the oceans, that is, unless you eat jellyfish. And this is this voracious predator launching a sneak attack on this poor little unsuspecting jellyfish there, a by-the-wind sailor. And that predator is the giant ocean sunfish, the Mola mola, whose primary prey are jellyfish.
水母很奇异,有催人入睡的魔力,也很美丽, 你们可以在周五的水族馆里看到许多更华丽的, 但它们的刺很可怕,而且水母寿司和水母“生鱼片” 也不够填饱你的肚子。 100克水母大约等于四卡路里的热量。 因此,它或许有助于减小腰围, 但更可能让你时常忍饥挨饿。 而且一个只充满了水母的大海 对其他生活在其中的生物来讲也不是一件好事, 除非,有其他捕猎水母的动物存在。 这就是一个贪婪的捕食者正在对这只可怜的,毫无察觉的, 顺水漂流的小水母发起攻击。 而这个捕食者就是翻车鱼,Mola mola, 它们的主要食物就是水母。
This animal is in "The Guinness World Book of Records" for being the world's heaviest bony fish. It reaches up to almost 5,000 pounds -- on a diet of jellyfish, primarily. And I think it's kind of a nice little cosmological convergence here that the Mola mola -- its common name is sunfish -- that its favorite food is the moon jelly. So it's kind of nice, the sun and the moon getting together this way, even if one is eating the other. Now this is typically how you see sunfish, this is where they get their common name. They like to sunbathe, can't blame them. They just lay out on the surface of the sea and most people think they're sick or lazy, but that's a typical behavior, they lie out and bask on the surface.
在吉尼斯世界纪录中, 这是世界上最重的硬骨鱼, 能达到5000磅重——而它们的食物主要就是水母。 这里有个我觉得是很微妙的宇宙学巧合, 翻车鱼,也称为太阳鱼, 它最喜欢的食物是月亮水母。 很有趣,太阳和月亮以这样的方式聚到一起了, 即使是吃与被吃的关系。 现在,这是你们看到翻车鱼的一般情形, 这就是它们被叫做太阳鱼的原因。 原来它们喜欢日光浴,不能责备它们。 它们只是摆平了浮在海面上, 而大多数人以为这是病态或懒惰,但这只是一种典型的行为, 它们就是喜欢摆平了在海面上晒太阳。
Their other name, Mola mola, is -- it sounds Hawaiian, but it's actually Latin for millstone, and that's attributable to their roundish, very bizarre, cut-off shape. It's as if, as they were growing, they just forgot the tail part. And that's actually what drew me to the Mola in the first place, was this terribly bizarre shape. You know, you look at sharks, and they're streamlined, and they're sleek, and you look at tuna, and they're like torpedoes -- they just give away their agenda. They're about migration and strength, and then you look at the sunfish.
它们的另一个名字,Mola mola,听起来像夏威夷语, 实际上却是拉丁语中“磨石”的意思, 这与它们那圆形,很怪异,似乎被切割了一样的形状有关。 它们,就好比,在生长的时候忘记了尾巴部分。 实际上,让我对翻车鱼感兴趣的首要原因, 就是这种即为奇怪的形状。 大家知道,鲨鱼,它们是流线型的,很优美, 还有金枪鱼,就像鱼雷一样, 它们没有日程安排,它们就代表着迁徙和力量, 然后你们再看看翻车鱼。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And this is just so elegantly mysterious, it's just -- it really kind of holds its cards a lot tighter than say, a tuna. So I was just intrigued with what -- you know, what is this animal's story? Well, as with anything in biology, nothing really makes sense except in the light of evolution. The Mola's no exception. They appeared shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago, at a time when whales still had legs, and they come from a rebellious little puffer fish faction -- oblige me a little Kipling-esque storytelling here. Of course evolution is somewhat random, and you know, about 55 million years ago there was this rebellious little puffer fish faction that said, oh, the heck with the coral reefs -- we're going to head to the high seas. And lots of generations, lots of tweaking and torquing, and we turn our puffer into the Mola. You know, if you give Mother Nature enough time, that is what she will produce.
这实在是太匪夷所思了, 比起,譬如金枪鱼,它确实有点,优势差得太多了。 所以我就很好奇,这种动物有什么故事呢? 好,在生物学上,没有什么是说得通的, 除非按进化论的角度。 翻车鱼也不例外。 它们是在恐龙消失之后很短时间内出现的, 6500万年前,那时候鲸类还长着脚, 它们从河豚类群中“反叛”了出来—— 请允许我在这里套用下吉卜林讲故事的方式。 当然,进化在某种程度上是随机的, 大约5500万年年前,这一支叛变的河豚, 说,噢,珊瑚礁又怎么样? 我们要到远海去。 经过无数个世代,不断地调整和扭转, 河豚终于成了翻车鱼的样子。 要知道,如果给自然母亲足够的时间,她就会创造出这样的东西来。
They look -- maybe they look kind of prehistoric and unfinished, abridged perhaps, but in fact, in fact they are the -- they vie for the top position of the most evolutionarily-derived fish in the sea, right up there with flat fish. They're -- every single thing about that fish has been changed. And in terms of fishes -- fishes appeared 500 million years ago, and they're pretty modern, just 50 million years ago, so -- so interestingly, they give away their ancestry as they develop. They start as little eggs, and they're in "The Guinness World Book of Records" again for having the most number of eggs of any vertebrate on the planet. A single four-foot female had 300 million eggs, can carry 300 million eggs in her ovaries -- imagine -- and they get to be over 10 feet long. Imagine what a 10 foot one has. And from that little egg, they pass through this spiky little porcupine fish stage, reminiscent of their ancestry, and develop -- this is their little adolescent stage. They school as adolescents, and become behemoth loners as adults. That's a little diver up there in the corner.
它们看起来,或许它们看起来 有点史前,有点“未完待续”,或者说有点简略, 但事实上,事实上它们—— 是海洋中进化最彻底的鱼类之一, 更彻底的还有比目鱼。 它们就是——鱼类变化过程中的每个细节。 说到鱼类, 鱼类出现在5亿年前,而它们出现得相当晚, 大概5千万年前,所以, 有趣的是,它们在发展过程中抛弃了祖先遗传下来的东西。 它们从细小的卵开始, 再次进入“吉尼斯世界纪录”, 它们是世界上产卵最多的脊椎动物。 一只四英尺长的雌鱼能产3亿颗卵, 想想看,能在卵巢里储存3亿颗卵, 它们能长到10英尺,想象下10英尺的鱼能产多少卵。 从这么小的卵, 它们发育成类似这种六斑刺魨的阶段,让人想起它们的祖先, 再发育,这是它们的青少年阶段, 它们在青少年阶段时聚集成群,但成年时却独来独往。 在角落里有个小小的潜水者。
They're in "The Guinness World Book of Records" again for being the vertebrate growth champion of the world. From their little hatching size of their egg, into their little larval stage till they reach adulthood, they put on 600 million times an increase in weight. 600 million. Now imagine if you gave birth to a little baby, and you had to feed this thing. That would mean that your child, you would expect it to gain the weight of six Titanics. Now I don't know how you'd feed a child like that but -- we don't know how fast the Molas grow in the wild, but captive growth studies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium -- one of the first places to have them in captivity -- they had one that gained 800 lbs in 14 months. I said, now, that's a true American.
它们再次登上“吉尼斯世界纪录”, 这次是作为世界脊椎动物的生长冠军。 从小小的卵,到幼鱼, 再到成年,它们的体重增加了6亿倍! 6亿。想象下如果你有了个小孩, 你喂养他, 这意味着你的小孩,他会增肥六个泰坦尼克号的重量。 我不知道你会怎么喂养这个小孩, 我们也不知到翻车鱼在野外究竟长得多快, 但对蒙特利湾水族馆中捕获的翻车鱼进行研究, 这是首次捕获到它们的地方之一, 其中一头在14个月里长了800磅。 我说,这是条真正的美国鱼。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(掌声)
So being a loner is a great thing, especially in today's seas, because schooling used to be salvation for fishes, but it's suicide for fishes now. But unfortunately Molas, even though they don't school, they still get caught in nets as by-catch. If we're going to save the world from total jellyfish domination, then we've got to figure out what the jellyfish predators -- how they live their lives, like the Mola. And unfortunately, they make up a large portion of the California by-catch -- up to 26 percent of the drift net. And in the Mediterranean, in the swordfish net fisheries, they make up up to 90 percent. So we've got to figure out how they're living their lives. And how do you do that? How do you do that with an animal -- very few places in the world. This is an open ocean creature. It knows no boundaries -- it doesn't go to land.
这些庞然大物都是孤独行者,特别是在现在的海洋里, 过去,聚集成群往往是鱼类躲避掠食的方式, 但现在这却无异于自杀。 不幸的是,翻车鱼尽管不集群, 它们仍会被作为副渔获物被捕捞上来。 如果我们想避免整个世界被水母占据的景象, 我们就必须知道水母的捕食者, 像翻车鱼,是怎么生活的。 很不幸,在加州漂网的副渔获物中, 翻车鱼占到了26%。 而在地中海,在旗鱼的捕捞中, 它们占副渔获物的九成。 因此我们必须搞清楚它们是如何生活。 你会怎么做呢? 这种动物只分布在少数几个地方。 这是个远洋物种。它们生活的环境没有边界,它们不会上陆地。
How do you get insight? How do you seduce an open ocean creature like that to spill its secrets? Well, there's some great new technology that has just recently become available, and it's just a boon for getting insight into open ocean animals. And it's pictured right here, that little tag up there. That little tag can record temperature, depth and light intensity, which is correlated with time, and from that we can get locations. And it can record this data for up to two years, and keep it in that tag, release at a pre-programmed time, float to the surface, upload all that data, that whole travelogue, to satellite, which relays it directly to our computers, and we've got that whole dataset. And we didn't even have -- we just had to tag the animal and then we went home and you know, sat at our desks. So the great thing about the Mola is that when we put the tag on them -- if you look up here -- that's streaming off, that's right where we put the tag. And it just so happens that's a parasite hanging off the Mola.
你会如何探寻其中奥秘? 你会如何诱使这样一种大洋生物透露它的秘密? 一些伟大的新技术, 在最近刚刚出现, 为深入研究大洋的动物提供了便利。 如图所示。那个小标签。 这个小标签能记录温度、深度和光强度, 并与时间相关,从这些数据我们就能确定位置。 它最多可以记录长达两年的数据, 将数据保存在标签里,并在预定的时间释放, 浮到海面,将所有的数据和整个的行程记录 传输到卫星,接着中转到我们的电脑上, 我们就可以得到整个的数据资料。 我们就只要给动物打上标签,然后回家坐在桌子旁。 因此研究翻车鱼最重要的一步 就是放标签的时候,看这里, 有东西飘动的那边,那就是我们放标签的位置。 那就像挂在翻车鱼身上的寄生虫一样。
Molas are infamous for carrying tons of parasites. They're just parasite hotels; even their parasites have parasites. I think Donne wrote a poem about that. But they have 40 genera of parasites, and so we figured just one more parasite won't be too much of a problem. And they happen to be a very good vehicle for carrying oceanographic equipment. They don't seem to mind, so far. So what are we trying to find out? We're focusing on the Pacific. We're tagging on the California coast, and we're tagging over in Taiwan and Japan. And we're interested in how these animals are using the currents, using temperature, using the open ocean, to live their lives. We'd love to tag in Monterey. Monterey is one of the few places in the world where Molas come in large numbers. Not this time of year -- it's more around October.
翻车鱼以携带成吨的寄生虫而闻名。 它们就是寄生虫的“酒店”,甚至它们的寄生虫也有寄生虫。 我想多恩曾为此写过一首诗。 它们携带有40个属的寄生虫, 我们想,就多一个寄生虫也没什么问题。 而它们也是携带海洋科学设备的绝好工具, 至少到目前,它们看起来并不介意。 那么我们想发现什么呢?我们把焦点放在太平洋。 我们做标记的地点,从加州海岸,到台湾和日本。 我们感兴趣的是这些动物是怎么利用海流, 利用温度和宽阔的海域,进行生活。 我们喜欢在蒙特利尔放标签。 蒙特利尔是世界上少数几个有大规模翻车鱼出没的地方之一。 不是这个时候——在十月左右更多。
And we'd love to tag here -- this is an aerial shot of Monterey -- but unfortunately, the Molas here end up looking like this because another one of our locals really likes Molas but in the wrong way. The California sea lion takes the Molas as soon as they come into the bay, rips off their fins, fashions them into the ultimate Frisbee, Mola style, and then tosses them back and forth. And I'm not exaggerating, it is just -- and sometimes they don't eat them, it's just spiteful. And you know, the locals think it's terrible behavior, it's just horrible watching this happen, day after day. The poor little Molas coming in, getting ripped to shreds, so we head down south, to San Diego. Not so many California sea lions down there. And the Molas there, you can find them with a spotter plane very easily, and they like to hang out under floating rafts of kelp. And under those kelps -- this is why the Molas come there because it's spa time for the Molas there. As soon as they get under those rafts of kelp, the exfoliating cleaner fish come. And they come and give the Molas -- you can see they strike this funny little position that says, "I'm not threatening, but I need a massage."
我们喜欢在这里标记,这是空中俯瞰蒙特利尔的情景。 不幸的是翻车鱼最后的样子是这样。 因为另一位本地居民也喜欢翻车鱼,但方式不同。 它们一进入湾内,就被加利福尼亚海狮抓住, 它们的鳍被撕掉,被当做大飞盘, 来回地扔来扔去。 我没有夸张,这就是, 有时候它们并不吃翻车鱼,而仅仅是恶作剧。 你知道,这些“本地居民”不在乎自己的可怕行为, 一天有一天地看到这种情景实在让人感到恐怖。 可怜的小翻车鱼进来就被撕成碎片。 因此我们往南走,到圣迭戈。 那里没有那么多的加利福尼亚海狮。 你可以通过侦察机轻易地找到那里的翻车鱼, 它们喜欢在漂浮的大型褐藻下游荡。 在这些海藻下——这也是翻车鱼来这里的原因—— 这是翻车鱼的疗养时间。 一旦它们到达海藻下方,吃死皮的清洁鱼就赶来。 它们来给翻车鱼—— 你能看到它们敲打这个有趣的位置,说, “我不是要威胁你,但我需要按摩。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And they'll put their fins out and their eyes go in the back of their head, and the fish come up and they just clean, clean, clean -- because the Molas, you know, there's just a smorgasbord of parasites. And it's also a great place to go down south because the water's warmer, and the Molas are kind of friendly down there. I mean what other kind of fish, if you approach it right, will say, "Okay, scratch me right there." You truly can swim up to a Mola -- they're very gentle -- and if you approach them right, you can give them a scratch and they enjoy it. So we've also tagged one part of the Pacific; we've gone over to another part of the Pacific, and we've tagged in Taiwan, and we tagged in Japan. And over in these places, the Molas are caught in set nets that line these countries. And they're not thrown back as by-catch, they're eaten. We were served a nine-course meal of Mola after we tagged. Well, not the one we tagged! And everything from the kidney, to the testes, to the back bone, to the fin muscle to -- I think that ís pretty much the whole fish -- is eaten.
它们伸出鳍,把眼睛缩回脑袋里, 鱼儿就上来,清洁,清洁,清洁—— 因为翻车鱼,就是个寄生虫自助餐厅。 再往南走也是不错的地方, 因为水较温暖,那里的翻车鱼也似乎友好一些。 我是说相比其他种鱼类,如果你靠近的方式正确, 翻车鱼会说,“好的,来给我这里抓抓痒。” 你真的可以游到翻车鱼身边,它们很温和, 如果你靠近得当,你就能给它们抓抓痒,它们会很享受。 这样我们就在太平洋的这一部分放了标签, 我们还要去太平洋的另一部分, 我们在台湾做标记,在日本做标记。 在这些地方,翻车鱼会被沿海的固定渔网捕捞上来。 它们并没有被当做副渔获物扔回去,而是被吃掉。 有一条翻车鱼在做了标记后不久,就被做成菜招待我们。 呃,不是我们标记的那条! 从肾脏,到睾丸,到脊柱, 还有鱼鳍上的肌肉等几乎是鱼身上的所有东西,都可以吃。
So the hardest part of tagging, now, is after you put that tag on, you have to wait, months. And you're just wondering, oh, I hope the fish is safe, I hope, I hope it's going to be able to actually live its life out during the course that the tag is recording. The tags cost 3500 dollars each, and then satellite time is another 500 dollars, so you're like, oh, I hope the tag is okay. And so the waiting is really the hardest part. I'm going to show you our latest dataset. And it hasn't been published, so it's totally privy information just for TED. And in showing you this, you know, when we're looking at this data, we're thinking, oh do these animals, do they cross the equator? Do they go from one side of the Pacific to the other? And we found that they kind of are homebodies. They're not big migrators. This is their track: we deployed the tag off of Tokyo, and the Mola in one month kind of got into the Kuroshio Current off of Japan and foraged there. And after four months, went up, you know, off of the north part of Japan. And that's kind of their home range. Now that's important, though, because if there's a lot of fishing pressure, that population doesn't get replenished. So that's a very important piece of data.
所以现在做标记最难的一部分, 就是做完标记之后,你必须等待数个月。 然后你就得想,噢,希望那鱼平安无事。 我希望,希望它能够在标签记录的这段时间里 确确实实地在海洋里生活。 每个标签耗费3500美元,租用卫星再花500美元, 所以你要,哦,我希望标签也没事。 所以等待的部分才是真正艰难的。 我要给你们看下最近的数据。 这还没有发表,完全是只提供给TED的私人信息。 而且在展示的时候,当我们看这些数据, 我们在想,这些动物,它们有没有越过赤道? 它们是不是从太平洋的这边游到了另一边? 然后我们发现它们其实有点居家男人的感觉。 它们不会大迁徙。这是它们的路线: 我们在东京附近做了标记,一个月之后, 它们似乎进入了日本附近的黑潮流域,在那里觅食。 而四个月后,它们到了日本的北部海域。 这就是它们的活动范围。 这一点很重要,因为如果那里渔业压力加大, 它们的数量就得不到补充。 因此这是个非常重要的数据。
But also what's important is that they're not slacker, lazy fish. They're super industrious. And this is a day in the life of a Mola, and if we -- they're up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and up and up and down, up to 40 times a day. As the sun comes up, you see in the blue, they start their dive. Down -- and as the sun gets brighter they go a little deeper, little deeper. They plumb the depths down to 600 meters, in temperatures to one degree centigrade, and this is why you see them on the surface -- it's so cold down there. They've got to come up, warm, get that solar power, and then plunge back into the depths, and go up and down and up and down. And they're hitting a layer down there; it's called the deep scattering layer -- which a whole variety of food's in that layer. So rather than just being some sunbathing slacker, they're really very industrious fish that dance this wild dance between the surface and the bottom and through temperature.
另一个重要的事情是它们并非好吃懒做者, 它们其实非常勤劳。 这是翻车鱼一天的生活, 它们游上游下,游上游下,游上游下…… 一天几乎要40次。 太阳升起来的时候,你看这蓝色里,它们开始下沉, 往下。当阳光变得强烈,它们就沉得更深一点,再深一点。 它们垂直下降可达600米,那里的温度仅1摄氏度, 这也是为什么会看到它们在海面的原因,那下面太冷了。 它们必须上升,寻找温暖,获得太阳能, 然后它们再下降到深处,然后上升,下降,上上下下。 而且它们会经过一个称为深海散射层的水层, 那里有各种各样的食物。 所以跟一些喜欢日光浴的懒汉比起来, 它们可辛勤地多,在海水表层和底层之间 在不同温度之间来回地舞蹈着。
We see the same pattern -- now with these tags we're seeing a similar pattern for swordfishes, manta rays, tunas, a real three-dimensional play. This is part of a much larger program called the Census of Marine Life, where they're going to be tagging all over the world and the Mola's going to enter into that. And what's exciting -- you all travel, and you know the best thing about traveling is to be able to find the locals, and to find the great places by getting the local knowledge. Well now with the Census of Marine Life, we'll be able to sidle up to all the locals and explore 90 percent of our living space, with local knowledge. It's never -- it's really never been a more exciting, or a vital time, to be a biologist.
通过这些标记,我们在旗鱼、鲾鲼、金枪鱼等 身上也看到了同样的行为模式, 一个真正三维立体的活动。 这是一个更大项目“海洋生物大普查”中的一部分, 他们的计划是在全世界进行标记, 翻车鱼也将是其中一部分。 让人兴奋的是,你们都旅行过,你们知道, 在旅行中最棒的事情就是找到当地人, 然后跟他们了解当地知识,找到最好玩的地方。 现在有了海洋生物大普查,我们能够走近所有的“土著”, 运用当地的知识,探索占我们生物圈90%的地方。 再没有比这个时候当个生物学家更让人兴奋的事了。
Which brings me to my last point, and what I think is kind of the most fun. I set up a website because I was getting so many questions about Molas and sunfish. And so I just figured I'd have the questions answered, and I'd be able to thank my funders, like National Geographic and Lindbergh. But people would write into the site with all sorts of, all sorts of stories about these animals and wanting to help me get samples for genetic analysis. And what I found most exciting is that everyone had a shared -- a shared love and an interest in the oceans. I was getting reports from Catholic nuns, Jewish Rabbis, Muslims, Christians -- everybody writing in, united by their love of life. And to me that -- I don't think I could say it any better than the immortal Bard himself: "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." And sure, it may be just one big old silly fish, but it's helping. If it's helping to unite the world, I think it's definitely the fish of the future.
这也引出我的最后一点,我想到的,也是最有趣的, 我办了个网站,因为我收到了许许多多关于翻车鱼的问题。 我觉得我必须使这些问题得到解答, 我要感谢我的资助者,如国家地理和林德伯格。 人们会在网站上写下各种各样, 各种各样有关这些动物的故事, 并希望帮助我获取样品进行遗传分析。 我最感激动地是每个人都有一种 对海洋的大无私的爱和兴趣。 我收到的报告有来自天主教修女的, 有犹太教拉比的,穆斯林的,基督徒的——每个人 都怀着对生命的爱来写。 对我来说,我觉得我说得永远没有那位不朽的诗人(莎士比亚)说得好: “轻轻一碰大自然,整个世界就亲昵起来” 这或许是一种古老的,笨笨的鱼, 但如果它能使世界团结起来,我想,它就属于未来。