美国国家公共电台 NPR What Happens After A Whale Dies?

What Happens After A Whale Dies?

MADDIE SOFIA, HOST:

You're listening to SHORT WAVE...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SOFIA: ...From NPR. Maddie Sofia here with SHORT WAVE reporter Emily Kwong.

EMILY KWONG, BYLINE¹: Hi there.

SOFIA: What kind of science gems² have you unearthed³ for us today, Kwong?

KWONG: Have you ever wondered what happens after a whale dies?

SOFIA: Yeah, of course. I wonder it all the time. And the internet tells me that they wash up on the shore.

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KWONG: Some do.

SOFIA: OK.

KWONG: But most actually fall, sometimes all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor. Whale falls, as they're called, are entire ecosystems⁴ onto themselves.

SOFIA: Cool.

KWONG: Right? Scientists often stumble across them while exploring the deep sea, sometimes with a submersible, other times with a remotely operated vehicle they control from the surface.

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KWONG: Yeah. And a few weeks ago, the E/V Nautilus, a research vessel⁶ under the direction of Robert Ballard...

SOFIA: The guy that discovered the Titanic⁷?

KWONG: That's the one - using one of these remotely operated vehicles discovered a whale fall believed to be some kind of baleen⁸ whale off the coast of California and livestreamed what they saw.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #1: A whale fall.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #2: Oh, a whale fall.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #1: Whoa.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #3: Oh, whoa.

(CROSSTALK)

SOFIA: (Laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #4: OK, can we...

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #5: Yes.

KWONG: You're hearing the collective awe⁹ of everyone on the Nautilus.

SOFIA: I'm hearing of bunch of nerds, is what I'm hearing - which I like.

KWONG: Honestly, these scientists can barely contain their whale puns.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #6: We did not find this whale fall on porpoise¹⁰.

SOFIA: OK. Honestly, in my experience, scientists aren't trying to contain their puns that hard.

KWONG: Nor their wonder, apparently¹¹, at all the creatures scavenging this whale carcass. They're panning the camera up close and looking at everything that's covering the bones like a squirmy, shaggy carpet.

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UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #1: Look at them.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #3: Wow.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #7: Wow.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #3: This is incredible. Talk about...

SOFIA: (Laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #1: So yeah. This is challenge...

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #8: Can you zoom¹² on the bones? They look like they have...

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #3: The dinner bell ringing, right?

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #1: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #9: We are so excited up here, just saying.

UNIDENTIFIED SCIENTIST #3: Greg (ph), can I zoom?

KWONG: Today on the show, what happens after a whale dies?

SOFIA: And how biodiversity finds a way at the bottom of the sea.

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SOFIA: OK. So whale falls - what are they, exactly?

KWONG: Well, to find out, I talked to a deep-sea biologist.

DIVA AMON: So my name is Diva Amon. And I'm originally from Trinidad and Tobago, but I'm currently based at the Natural History Museum in London.

KWONG: Diva grew up swimming and sailing and snorkeling in those waters of the Caribbean. She studies the deep sea, human impacts too. And every so often, researchers like her will come across these whale falls, carcasses that have floated down to the bottom. Diva likens them to food packages from the sky...

SOFIA: (Laughter).

KWONG: Yeah, for the creatures down below to consume.

SOFIA: OK. And what is it like down there, like, in the deep sea?

KWONG: Cold...

SOFIA: Yeah.

KWONG: ...Dark - very, very dark - high pressure, all the water pushing down. And it's also full of these very interesting organisms that you can see when they turn those lights on in the submersibles. And they will - some of them will feed on little bits of matter that are falling from the surface almost like snow.

AMON: So it's mostly dead plankton¹³, dead shells of animals, their poop. That forms marine¹⁴ snow. But occasionally, you tend to get larger packages of food, so things like dead whales or trees or manta rays or turtles. When they die, they often drift down into the deep sea. And when they hit that deep-sea floor, it's like Thanksgiving or Christmas. And like your family come from all over the country for these events, you know, different species come from all over the deep sea.

SOFIA: So, like, they don't want to be there, but there's so much food that they have to.

KWONG: (Laughter).

SOFIA: You know what I mean?

KWONG: You can't pass it up.

SOFIA: (Laughter).

KWONG: I mean, this is a - this is like a Christmas miracle. It can nurture¹⁵ that part of the deep-sea floor for centuries.

SOFIA: Wow.

KWONG: The whale - average whale carcass has two tons of carbon in it.

SOFIA: Holy crap (laughter).

KWONG: (Laughter) Diva said that's the equivalent of 2,000 years' worth of the marine snow we were talking about earlier.

SOFIA: That just normally falls.

KWONG: That normally falls down from the surface, exactly.

SOFIA: Wow. OK. And so what kind of creatures enjoy freshly fallen whale?

KWONG: This is the coolest part to me.

SOFIA: OK.

KWONG: Well, there are different stages to a whale fall, and each step brings different organisms to the table. Putting the tablecloth¹⁶ out there...

SOFIA: Right.

KWONG: ...A whale has freshly fallen. First is the mobile scavenger¹⁷ stage.

AMON: Big fish, like sharks and rattails and hagfish, and big crustaceans¹⁸ like isopods - which are kind of like roly-polies - and amphipods and lobsters¹⁹, they come from far and wide to feed on the flesh of the whale.

KWONG: OK. They're first to the buffet²⁰.

AMON: Exactly.

KWONG: They're those relatives who can't help themselves.

AMON: Exactly.

KWONG: Dive right in.

AMON: And they just clean it up...

KWONG: (Laughter).

AMON: ...Clean it up, clean of all the - clean up that carcass.

KWONG: And they clean the carcass to the bones, creating this nutrient-rich area in the surrounding sediment²¹ that sets the table for stage two, the enrichment opportunist stage. Yeah. And a completely different group of animals pull up a chair to eat.

AMON: So you'll get things that are much smaller in size, so little crustaceans or little worms, a lot of things that live in the sediment and sort of eat up all those little crumbs²² that have been left essentially²³ from the feeding activity before.

KWONG: Giving way to stage three, the self-fulfilling stage when just the bones are left, and bacteria break down fat trapped inside those bones. And while they do that, they produce hydrogen sulfide as a byproduct of that reaction.

SOFIA: Like the gas found in drilling for, like, oil.

KWONG: Yeah. It smells like rotten eggs to us, but that hydrogen sulfide is used by different bacteria and other microbes to power their life.

AMON: It's a process called chemosynthesis. It's where chemical energy is used to make food. And so you get - again, you get a completely different set of animals, a lot of bacteria, these thick bacterial²⁴ mats that grow all over the bones and are white and yellow and orange and are - sort of can glow.

KWONG: And scientists now suspect there's a fourth stage called the reef stage...

SOFIA: Keeps getting better.

KWONG: Right? - where the whale bones have been picked so thoroughly²⁵ apart they create a structure somewhat like a coral reef. Yeah, it's this whole ecosystem⁵ on the deep sea.

SOFIA: So cool.

KWONG: And there's entire species that were first discovered on whale bones.

SOFIA: You know what, Kwong? Evolution's the best.

KWONG: Yeah, the biodiversity there, especially in stage three - I got to say - is unlike any other community on the deep-sea floor that you'll find. I'm talking chemosynthetic clams²⁶...

SOFIA: Yes.

KWONG: ...Mussels...

SOFIA: All right.

KWONG: ...Snails²⁷ and what Diva calls the most charismatic, bone-eating worms.

SOFIA: Yes.

KWONG: They eat the whale bones - called Osedax. And up close, they look like bright-red trees or pink trees with little roots.

AMON: And they use that root structure to burrow²⁸ down into the bones of that whale and suck out the nutrients²⁹, basically.

KWONG: Wow.

AMON: And so they live only on the bones of dead animals. And so - I mean, what a crazy way of life, right?

KWONG: (Laughter).

AMON: Like, life in the deep sea finds a way. No matter where it is and what it is, it will find a way.

KWONG: It always does. All this evolutionary³⁰ novelty is housed in the ecosystem of a whale fall. And that is why Diva says it's worth studying and protecting.

AMON: While we know more than we ever have, we still have so many questions. And understanding the importance of many of these habitats in the deep sea such as whale falls is still new and emerging. And so there could be reasons that we need them around that we don't yet know.

KWONG: According to NOAA, less than 10% of the ocean has been mapped by sonar.

SOFIA: Wow.

KWONG: Less than 10%. And even in those mapped areas, we don't necessarily have a great idea what's happening on the sea floor.

SOFIA: That's wild.

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SOFIA: This is amazing. This is an amazing episode. It's got evolution. It's got microbes. It's got Christmas.

KWONG: I made it for you.

SOFIA: All right. Emily Kwong, thank you so much.

KWONG: Thank you, Maddie.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SOFIA: We'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of Alaskan scientist, artist and radio host Richard Nelson, who we featured on our episode about the Tongass National Forest.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "ENCOUNTERS")

RICHARD NELSON: Hi. I'm Richard Nelson for "Encounters," a program of observations, experiences and reflections on the world around us.

SOFIA: So to close out this program about whales, here are some humpbacks Richard Nelson recorded from his program "Encounters" while paddling in a little orange kayak, microphone pointing towards the ocean, listening, as he always was, to the natural world.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "ENCOUNTERS")

NELSON: Do you hear that kind of siren sound in the background...

(SOUNDBITE OF HUMPBACK WHALE CALLING)

NELSON: ...Faintly audible? Oh.

(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)

NELSON: We heard the feeding call of the humpback whales, and then the sound of this congregation of whales erupting through the surface of the water.

SOFIA: Today's episode was produced by Brit Hanson and edited by Viet Le. This has been NPR's SHORT WAVE. We'll see you tomorrow.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 gems   

growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长

参考例句：

• a crown studded with gems 镶有宝石的皇冠
• The apt citations and poetic gems have adorned his speeches. 贴切的引语和珠玑般的诗句为他的演说词增添文采。

3 unearthed   

出土的（考古）

参考例句：

• Many unearthed cultural relics are set forth in the exhibition hall. 展览馆里陈列着许多出土文物。
• Some utensils were in a state of decay when they were unearthed. 有些器皿在出土时已经残破。

4 ecosystems   

n.生态系统( ecosystem的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There are highly sensitive and delicately balanced ecosystems in the forest. 森林里有高度敏感、灵敏平衡的各种生态系统。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Madagascar's ecosystems range from rainforest to semi-desert. 马达加斯加生态系统类型多样，从雨林到半荒漠等不一而足。 来自辞典例句

5 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

6 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

7 titanic   

adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的

参考例句：

• We have been making titanic effort to achieve our purpose.我们一直在作极大的努力，以达到我们的目的。
• The island was created by titanic powers and they are still at work today.台湾岛是由一个至今仍然在运作的巨大力量塑造出来的。

8 baleen   

n.鲸须

参考例句：

• Other baleen whales have splash guards too,but not like this.一些须鲸物种头顶也有护住喷水孔的构造，但并不长成这样。
• Baleen whales often appear in this region. Be careful!这一带经常有须鲸出没，要注意安全啊。

9 awe   

n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧

参考例句：

• The sight filled us with awe.这景色使我们大为惊叹。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

10 porpoise   

n.鼠海豚

参考例句：

• What is the difference between a dolphin and porpoise?海豚和和鼠海豚有什么区别？
• Mexico strives to save endangered porpoise.墨西哥努力拯救濒危的鼠海豚。

11 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

12 zoom   

n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升

参考例句：

• The airplane's zoom carried it above the clouds.飞机的陡直上升使它飞到云层之上。
• I live near an airport and the zoom of passing planes can be heard night and day.我住在一个飞机场附近，昼夜都能听到飞机飞过的嗡嗡声。

13 plankton   

n.浮游生物

参考例句：

• Plankton is at the bottom of the marine food chain.浮游生物处于海洋食物链的最底层。
• The plankton in the sea feeds many kinds of animals. 海的浮游生物成为很多种动物的食物。

14 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

15 nurture   

n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持

参考例句：

• The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
• The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。

16 tablecloth   

n.桌布，台布

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth.他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。
• She smoothed down a wrinkled tablecloth.她把起皱的桌布熨平了。

17 scavenger   

n.以腐尸为食的动物，清扫工

参考例句：

• He's just fit for a job as scavenger.他只配当个清道夫。
• He is not a scavenger nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are.它不是食腐动物，也不像有些鲨鱼那样，只知道游来游去满足食欲。

18 crustaceans   

n.甲壳纲动物（如蟹、龙虾）( crustacean的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• These crustaceans provide a valuable food source for some fish. 这些甲壳纲动物是某些鱼类重要的食物来源。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• When the tide ebbs it's a rock pool inhabited by crustaceans. 退潮时，它便成为甲壳动物居住的岩石区潮水潭。 来自辞典例句

19 lobsters   

龙虾( lobster的名词复数 )； 龙虾肉

参考例句：

• I have no idea about how to prepare those cuttlefish and lobsters. 我对如何烹调那些乌贼和龙虾毫无概念。
• She sold me a couple of live lobsters. 她卖了几只活龙虾给我。

20 buffet   

n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台

参考例句：

• Are you having a sit-down meal or a buffet at the wedding?你想在婚礼中摆桌宴还是搞自助餐？
• Could you tell me what specialties you have for the buffet?你能告诉我你们的自助餐有什么特色菜吗？

21 sediment   

n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物)

参考例句：

• The sediment settled and the water was clear.杂质沉淀后，水变清了。
• Sediment begins to choke the channel's opening.沉积物开始淤塞河道口。

22 crumbs   

int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式

参考例句：

• She stood up and brushed the crumbs from her sweater. 她站起身掸掉了毛衣上的面包屑。
• Oh crumbs! Is that the time? 啊，天哪！都这会儿啦？

23 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

24 bacterial   

a.细菌的

参考例句：

• Bacterial reproduction is accelerated in weightless space. 在失重的空间，细菌繁殖加快了。
• Brain lesions can be caused by bacterial infections. 大脑损伤可能由细菌感染引起。

25 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

26 clams   

n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The restaurant's specialities are fried clams. 这个餐厅的特色菜是炸蚌。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We dug clams in the flats et low tide. 退潮时我们在浅滩挖蛤蜊。 来自辞典例句

27 snails   

n.蜗牛；迟钝的人；蜗牛( snail的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I think I'll try the snails for lunch—I'm feeling adventurous today. 我想我午餐要尝一下蜗牛——我今天很想冒险。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Most snails have shells on their backs. 大多数蜗牛背上有壳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

28 burrow   

vt.挖掘(洞穴)；钻进；vi.挖洞；翻寻；n.地洞

参考例句：

• Earthworms burrow deep into the subsoil.蚯蚓深深地钻进底土。
• The dog had chased a rabbit into its burrow.狗把兔子追进了洞穴。

29 nutrients   

n.（食品或化学品）营养物，营养品( nutrient的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a lack of essential nutrients 基本营养的缺乏
• Nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream. 营养素被吸收进血液。 来自《简明英汉词典》

30 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。