Protecting coral reefs

保護(hù)珊瑚礁

Please do not bleach

請不要回避（白化）

詞匯

Bleach/退縮；回避；使變白

這里blench一指不要回避保護(hù)珊瑚礁的項目，再用blench指出珊瑚礁面臨的白化現(xiàn)象，希望能夠控制住。

An idea to save coral reefs from climate change takes a step forward

將珊瑚礁從氣候變化中拯救出來的想法向前邁出了一步

Bleaching is bad for coral. It happens when heat-stressed polyps, the sessile animals that construct coral reefs, eject the photosynthetic algae which usually reside within them. These algae are symbionts, providing nutrients to their hosts in return for shelter, so losing them is harmful to polyps and often results in their death. The higher temperatures brought about by global warming have therefore led to worries that more frequent episodes of bleaching might result in the loss of entire reefs.

珊瑚白化對珊瑚有害。這發(fā)生于熱應(yīng)激性的珊瑚蟲——一種建造珊瑚的無柄動物，驅(qū)逐通常寄生在他們身上的，靠光合作用自給的藻類的情況下。這些藻類是共生體，為宿主提供營養(yǎng)以換取庇護(hù)，因此失去它們對珊瑚蟲是有害的，往往會導(dǎo)致它們的死亡。因此，全球變暖帶來的更高溫度引發(fā)了人們的擔(dān)憂，即更頻繁的白化現(xiàn)象可能導(dǎo)致整個珊瑚礁的消失。

詞匯

Polyp/珊瑚蟲

Sessile/無柄的

Photosynthetic/ ?[生化] 光合的；光合作用的

Algae/ [植] 藻類；[植] 海藻

Symbionts/ [生態(tài)] 共生者；共生有機(jī)體

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Some of these symbiotic arrangements between alga and animal are, however, more heat-sensitive than others. It might therefore be possible to save reefs by seeding them with heat-resistant symbioses. As temperatures rose, these biological partnerships would spread and the reef they had been transplanted to would survive. Two researchers studying this idea are Megan Morikawa and Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University, in California. And they have just published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which suggests that it might work.

然而，藻類和動物之間的一些共生組合比其他的生物更熱敏感。因此，通過在珊瑚礁上播下耐熱共生植物來拯救它們是可行的。隨著溫度的升高，這些共生組合將會散播開來，它們被移植到的珊瑚礁也會存活下來。加州斯坦福大學(xué)的Megan Morikawa和Stephen Palumbi是研究這一觀點的兩名研究人員。他們剛剛在《美國國家科學(xué)院院刊》上發(fā)表了一篇論文，表明這種方法可能有效。

詞匯

Reef/暗礁；[地質(zhì)] 礦脈；收帆

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Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi started by collecting 20 representatives of each of four types of coral from a lagoon o? the coast of American Samoa. They picked the lagoon in question because it was small and shallow, and thus had limited water circulation. This meant it often experienced temperature spikes, so any corals living within it would be expected to be adapted to endure such spikes. Laboratory tests proved those expectations correct.

Morikawa博士和Palumbi博士首先從美屬薩摩亞海岸的一個環(huán)礁湖收集了四種珊瑚中每一種的20個代表樣本。他們?yōu)榱瞬孪脒x定這個環(huán)礁湖是因為它又小又淺，因此水循環(huán)有限。這意味著它經(jīng)常經(jīng)歷溫度頂峰，所以生活在其中的任何珊瑚都有可能適應(yīng)這種頂峰。實驗室測試證明這些預(yù)期是正確的。

詞匯

Lagoon/環(huán)礁湖；咸水湖

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The researchers then picked a second reef, 3km from the original lagoon, which had similar mean temperatures over the year but experienced lower daily temperature ?uctuations. They seeded this with 400 fragments derived from their collected samples and a further 400 that were not heat-resistant, to act as controls. The original plan had been to let these transplanted corals grow for a while in their new environment and then bring them back to base for testing. Nature, however, intervened. Eight months after the seeding, soaring temperatures caused extensive bleaching on the reef.

然后，研究人員在距原始環(huán)礁湖3公里的地方選擇了第二個暗礁，那里一年的平均溫度相似，但每天的溫度波動較低。他們將從采集的樣本中提取的400個片段植入湖內(nèi)，同時，作為對照另外400個不耐熱的片段也植入其中。最初的計劃是讓這些移植的珊瑚在新環(huán)境中生長一段時間，然后把它們帶回基地進(jìn)行測試。然而自然環(huán)境在干預(yù)實驗。播種八個月后，不斷飆升的氣溫導(dǎo)致珊瑚礁大面積白化。

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Their hands thus forced, Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi put on their scuba gear and went diving to see how their transplants had fared. They found that those from resistant colonies were between a half and a third as likely to have become bleached as were the controls. Moreover, when they returned to the parent corals in the shallow lagoon and looked at the health of these after the bleaching event, they found that the experience of the parents tended to match that of their o?spring. The eight months of acclimatisation and growth the transplants had undergone had not, in other words, eliminated the heat tolerance they inherited from their parent colonies.

森川博士和帕魯比博士的手工作業(yè)暫告一段落，他們佩戴上潛水器，去潛水，看看他們的移植方案進(jìn)展如何。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，與對照組相比，來自耐熱性的珊瑚礁種群有一半到三分之一的可能會變白。此外，當(dāng)他們回到淺環(huán)礁湖的珊瑚母體中，觀察漂白事件后這些珊瑚的健康狀況時，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，父母的經(jīng)歷往往與子女的經(jīng)歷相配。換句話說，移植物經(jīng)過八個月的適應(yīng)和生長，并沒有消除它們從母株那里遺傳來的耐熱性。

詞匯

scuba gear/水中呼吸裝置

colony/種群

acclimatization/適應(yīng)性；服水土

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Though eight months is not that long, this result is encouraging. Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi now plan an extended study in Palau. If that proves successful, then the idea of saving reefs by seeding them with heat-resistant strains will have received a signi?cant boost.

雖然8個月并不長，但這一結(jié)果令人鼓舞。森川博士和帕隆比博士現(xiàn)在計劃在帕勞進(jìn)行一項長期研究。如果這被證明是成功的，那么通過在珊瑚礁上播種耐熱菌株來拯救它們的想法將會得到極大的推動。