万物简史 第399期:浩瀚的海洋(18)

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Most of the drums were exactly the sort you see rusting³ behind gas stations or standing⁴ outside factories, with no protective linings⁵ of any type. 大多数的桶就是我们堆放在加油站后面或在工厂外面生锈的那种桶，根本没有任何保护性内衬。

When they failed to sink, which was usually, Navy gunners riddled⁶ them with bullets to let water in (and, of course, plutonium, uranium, and strontium out). 要是桶没有沉下去（而情况通常就是那样），海军枪手的子弹会打得它们千疮百孔，把海水放进去（当然还会把钚，铀和锶放出来）。

Before it was halted in the 1990s, 到20世纪90年代这佯的倾倒停止以前，

the United States had dumped many hundreds of thousands of drums into about fifty ocean sites—almost fifty thousand of them in the Farallons alone. 美国已经在海洋上大约50个地点倾倒了几千几万桶这类垃圾——光在硅拉龙群岛海域就倾倒了大约5万桶。

But the U.S. was by no means alone. 但是，干这种事的绝不止美国一个国家。

Among the other enthusiastic dumpers were Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and nearly all the nations of Europe. 干得起劲的国家当中还有俄罗斯、中国、日本、新西兰和几乎所有的欧洲国家。

And what effect might all this have had on life beneath the seas? 这一切对海洋里的生物会有什么影响？

Well, little, we hope, but we actually have no idea. 哎呀，但愿很小，但我们真的不清楚。

We are astoundingly, sumptuously⁷, radiantly ignorant of life beneath the seas. 我们派头很大，盲目乐观，对海洋里的生物全然无知，这是令人吃惊的。

Even the most substantial ocean creatures are often remarkably⁸ little known to us—including the most mighty⁹ of them all, the great blue whale, 我们连对海洋里最大的生物也往往不可思议地了解甚少——其中包括最最巨大的蓝鲸。

a creature of such leviathan proportions that (to quote David Attenborough) its "tongue weighs as much as an elephant, 这种庞然大物如此之大，（引用戴维·阿登堡禄的话来说）它的“舌头重如大象，

its heart is the size of a car and some of its blood vessels¹⁰ are so wide that you could swim down them." 心脏大似汽车，有的血管大得你可以在里面游泳”。

It is the most gargantuan¹¹ beast that Earth has yet produced, bigger even than the most cumbrous dinosaurs¹². 它是地球上有过的最大的动物，比最大的恐龙还要大。

Yet the lives of blue whales are largely a mystery to us. 然而，蓝鲸的生活对我们来说在很大程度上是个谜。

Much of the time we have no idea where they are—where they go to breed, for instance, or what routes they follow to get there. 在许多时间里我们不知道它们的去向——比如，它们是去哪里产崽的，它们是从哪条路线去那里的。

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