2015_01_21 Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is Forecast 海洋生态破坏规模空前2015_01_21 Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is Forecast 海洋生态破坏规模空前.docx

Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is ForecastBy CARL ZIMMER January 16, 2015科学家警告：海洋生态破坏规模空前CARL ZIMMER 2015年01月16日A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of committing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.在对数百个来源的数据进行了开创性的分析之后，一个科学家团队得出结论：人类处在对海洋及海洋动物造成前所未有的大破坏的边缘。“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a co-author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.“我们可能就坐在重大灭绝事件的悬崖上，”加州大学圣巴巴拉分校生态学家道格拉斯·J·麦考利(Douglas J. McCauley)说，他是《科学》杂志本周四发表的一项新研究的合著者。But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health.但我们仍有时间来避免灾难，麦考利博士和同事还发现。与陆地相比，海洋绝大部分依然保持完整，仍然有足够旺盛的生命力，可以恢复健康的生态。“We’re lucky in many ways,” said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and a co-author of the new report. “The impacts are accelerating, but they’re not so bad we can’t reverse them.”“从很多方面来说，我们都很幸运，”该报告的合著者、罗格斯大学(Rutgers University)的海洋生物学家马林·L·平斯基(Malin L. Pinsky)说。“海洋受影响的速度正在加快，但状况没有糟糕到无法扭转的地步。”Scientific assessments of the ocean’s health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.对海洋健康状况进行的科学评估存在着不确定性：与追踪陆上物种的健康状况相比，研究人员很难判断踪迹延伸万里的水下物种的状况。科学家们观察到的某一海洋生态系统的具体变化，可能无法反映地球的整体发展趋势。Dr. Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catc