海洋深处生存着各种各样的生物，就鱼的种类来说就让我们眼花缭乱。现在如果给你一次机会，借助先进的仪器、设备，让你数清楚海洋中有多少种鱼，你愿意试一试吗？本文介绍了海洋生物学家是如何探测海洋生物种类的。
With GREat difficulty, recording every species of fish throughout the seven seas sounds ambitious — and it is. But the marine biologists involved in the 10-year, $1bn1 census of marine life, which released its first results last week, have set themselves an even tougher task: to record everything that lives on, near or under the sea. Not just fish, but everything from turtles and seagulls to microscopic worms and algae2.
Scientists are also trawling3 through historical records hundreds of years old to work out what the situation was in the past, and, by using computer models, to predict how things will change in the future. “It’s incredible what they’re doing,” says Alasdair McIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Fisheries and Oceanography4 at Aberdeen University, and a consultant on the new project. As well as using scuba5 divers to collect samples and record sightings in shallow waters, the scientists are taking advantage of new technologies such as sonar6 and remote deep sea submarines, to scrape samples from the seabed and to photograph the bizarre creatures that live in its depths. Other researchers are using advanced tags7 to follow the travels of sea mammals and big migratory fish like tuna. “In the old days you would fit a strip of something to a fish and when someone brought it back, you knew where it was put on, so you could guess the fish had moved between the two areas,” McIntyre says. “These new tags tell you not only the temperature and salinity8 of the water as well as information about the nutrients in it, but they even tell you the heartbeat of the fish.” During the first three years of the project some 210,000 species of marine life have been noted, including 600 new species of fish. This total figure is expected to rise to over
Form www.guardian.co.uk
Thursday October 30, 2003
Notes: 1. bn. (=billion) 10亿 2. algae n.藻类, 海藻， 单数为：alga 3. trawl vi., vt.（常与through连用）搜索，搜罗 4. Oceanography n.海洋学 5. scuba n. 自携式水下呼吸器，包括压缩空气和在水下用于呼吸的便携式仪器 6. sonar n.声纳， 一种系统，通过利用传送或反射的水下声波，来探测或定位水下物体或者测量某一水域的深度 7. tag n.标签，附在某物上或挂在佩戴者脖子上以便证明身份、分类或标志的小块皮革、纸片、金属或塑料 8. salinity n.盐分; 盐浓度, 咸度; 含盐量
