跟蹤南冰洋附近遷徙的鯨魚

In New Zealand, southern right whales were hunted to near extinctionabout a century ago. Since that time, the population has slowly recovered.

在新西蘭，南露脊鯨在大約一個世紀(jì)前被捕殺至瀕臨滅絕。但自那時起，其數(shù)量就緩慢回升。

Dr Emma Carroll, University of Auckland

My name is Dr Emma Carroll. I'm the lead scientist on a research project called 'Tohora no Aotearoa', which is a Maori phrase that means 'southern right whales of New Zealand'. We estimated there are around 2000 whales in 2009.

艾瑪·卡羅爾博士 新西蘭奧克蘭大學(xué)

“我是艾瑪·卡羅爾博士。我是一個名為 ‘Tohora no Aotearoa’ 的研究項(xiàng)目的首席科學(xué)家，這是一個毛利語短語，意思是 ‘新西蘭南露脊鯨’。我們在2009年估計(jì)約有2000頭鯨魚。

However, nobody's really gone back to look at them over the last decade.

然而，在過去十年間，沒有人真正回去查看它們。

And so, this year and last year, we conducted surveys at their main wintering ground down in the Auckland Islands, which is about 450 kilometres south of the main islands of New Zealand.

所以，今年和去年，我們在這些鯨魚的主要越冬地開展了調(diào)查，即新西蘭主島以南450公里的奧克蘭群島。”

Dr Emma Carroll, University of Auckland

So, what we did is we used satellite tags to track their migrationsout of that Auckland Islands wintering ground and follow them around the Southern Ocean.

艾瑪·卡羅爾博士 新西蘭奧克蘭大學(xué)

“我們使用了衛(wèi)星追蹤裝置來跟蹤它們從奧克蘭群島的越冬地遷移出來的過程，并跟蹤它們到了南冰洋周圍。

The whales are still transmitting, we're still collecting a lot of data, but already what we've found has been quite surprising. Historically, we knew that southern right whales from New Zealand would travel north and east of New Zealand during those spring and summer months. However, none of our tracked whales show those migrationpatterns, and instead, most of them actually go west.

這些鯨魚身上的裝置仍在傳送信號，我們也仍在收集大量數(shù)據(jù)，但目前的發(fā)現(xiàn)相當(dāng)驚人。我們知道，新西蘭的南露脊鯨向來會在春夏月份遷徙到新西蘭的北部和東部。然而，沒有任何一頭被我們追蹤的鯨魚顯示出了這種遷移模式，相反，它們中的大多數(shù)其實(shí)是向西遷移的。”

[Surprisingly one whale, dubbedBill, kept transmitting for a year. He went on the longest migration ever recorded for the species. 令人驚訝的是，一頭名叫比爾的鯨魚在一年內(nèi)持續(xù)傳送信號。它進(jìn)行了有記錄以來該物種距離最長的遷徙。]

Dr Emma Carroll, University of Auckland

So, these results are actually pretty important and give us hope for this population because Bill or Wiremu the whale is actually feeding in areas south of Australia, as well as along the Antarctic coast. And so what that says is, you know, maybe one of those regions won't be so good and won't have as much preyone year, but maybe the other will, and so there is resilience there. And so that gives us hope that even with changing oceans, these whales have more than one strategy that they can use to find lots of food.

艾瑪·卡羅爾博士 新西蘭奧克蘭大學(xué)

“所以，這些結(jié)果其實(shí)非常重要，讓我們對該鯨魚物種生出希望，因?yàn)轹L魚比爾或威勒姆其實(shí)是在澳大利亞南部和南極海岸一帶覓食的。這就意味著，也許其中的一個地區(qū)一年內(nèi)情況不佳，沒有什么獵物，但也許其它地點(diǎn)有，所以這體現(xiàn)了鯨魚的適應(yīng)力。因此，這給了我們希望：即使海洋不斷變化，這些鯨魚也有不只一種策略來尋找大量食物。

I'm really proud of the fact that we are using all of these modern tools to get a really complete picture of not just their recovery but how they're using the oceans. And we're able to bring those two aspects together to get a really good picture of where this population is at and how it might go in the future.

這件事讓我引以為傲：我們正在使用這些現(xiàn)代工具來獲得鯨魚的真正全貌，不僅了解它們數(shù)量上的回升，還包括它們利用海洋的方式。我們能夠把兩方面結(jié)合起來，從而對該物種數(shù)量的現(xiàn)狀和未來的發(fā)展有很好的認(rèn)識。”