環(huán)球英語 — 643：Counting Ocean Life, Part One
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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Ryan Geertsma.
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And I'm Robin Basselin. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
"Take me out to sea, I want to go deep as can be
We have been looking up to stars and now the time has come
To Look to the Sea"
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A singer named Maryann Camilleri wrote a song about the sea. In particular, she wrote it about human knowledge of the sea. We humans know more about the sky and the stars above than we know about the deep seas on our own planet. So Maryann sings,
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"Take me out to sea, I want to go deep as can be
We have been looking up to stars and now the time has come
To Look to the Sea"
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Maryann wrote her song because she really liked a particular global science project. This project is called the Census of Marine Life. It is a huge project. It took ten years and 650 million dollars to complete. However, the results have been amazing. Today's Spotlight is the first of two programs about the Census of Marine Life.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5...
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A census is simply a count. Normally, a 'census' is an official count of the people who live in a country. It is when a government counts its citizens and gathers information about them.
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In a similar way, the Census of Marine Life aims to count the creatures that live in the sea - that is, the marine life. Oceans cover 70% of the world. And most of the oceans are very deep - averaging four thousand meters below the surface.
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People have fished, sailed and explored the world's oceans for thousands of years. However, until recently, we have had little knowledge about what lies below the ocean's surface. Before the Census, experts estimated that only 5% of ocean life had been explored.
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The world's oceans are very important to human life. They provide food, work and on a very basic level, life. Half of the all the oxygen we breathe is provided by plants that grow in the oceans. In the 1990's, many of the world's ocean scientists became concerned. They worried that our knowledge about ocean life was lacking. They believed we needed to know much more. So, they began asking three big questions about ocean life.
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"What lives in the oceans?"
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"What lives where in the oceans?"
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"How much of each kind of life lives?"
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These basic questions are about the diversity, distribution and abundance of ocean life. The questions were the beginning of the Census of Marine Life. In 2000, marine scientists worldwide joined together to begin this major project. They agreed to spend ten years working together on research. In autumn 2010, they published their results. 2700 scientists from more than 80 nations had completed 540 explorations of the world's oceans.
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Some of these trips explored the coasts. Others travelled deep into the unknown areas of the ocean floor. Together they tested millions of pieces of evidence and reported millions of results. All this information has begun to answer the basic questions asked by the world's marine scientists. The first question was about diversity -
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"What lives in the oceans?"
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The Census uncovered about six thousand marine species new to science. These species are different kinds of complex ocean life - plants, animals and fungi. The Census also created a central list - a database of all known ocean life. There were nearly 200,000 species on the list in autumn 2010, but the scientists say there will be many more.
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One discovery in the Mediterranean Sea was particularly amazing. Italian scientists indentified three new species. These organisms were very, very small - but they were also very special. They are the only known animals to live without oxygen! Paul Snelgrove is a marine Census scientist from Canada. He told National Public Radio about the importance of this discovery.
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"Basic things we think are true about life in the ocean are not always correct. This is an example. We now know that there are animals that can live without oxygen."
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The ocean is also full of hundreds of millions of single cell micro-organisms – microbes. Scientists have found that there are many more kinds of microbes in the ocean than they thought before the Census - a hundred times more! The Census has increased our knowledge of different kinds of life in the ocean - both big and small. But marine scientists know that they still have a lot to learn. In fact, they now believe that the ocean may have over one million species and even a thousand million kinds of microbes!
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Diversity is one sign of a healthy ocean - but there are others. That is why scientists also asked:
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"What lives where in the oceans?"
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"And how much of each kind of life lives?"
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Some kinds of life live almost everywhere in the world's oceans. However, other species live in very particular areas. So, the Census divided the world's oceans into 30 areas or regions. Scientists used their information to create 'maps' of ocean life in these regions. Not only did they map where different organisms lived, they also mapped where the organisms travelled.
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The Census also measured how much of each kind of life lives in the ocean - its abundance. For larger organisms, scientists can count abundance by number. However, for many smaller organisms, scientists record abundance by weight. They found that microbes form 90% of all the ocean's biomass or 'living weight'. Microbes are extremely small organisms that live all through the oceans. In many places they cover the ocean floors. Together, the ocean's microbes weigh about the same as 16,000,000,000,000 people - that is sixteen million million!
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All this information may seem unimportant for our everyday life. However, a recent accident showed just how important it can be. In April 2010, there was an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion caused the largest oil spill in history. Many fishers in the area could no longer work. People could no longer eat sea food from this area. The spill not only affected the ocean life, it also affected local and even global economies.
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Just a few months before the oil spill, the Census had finished its research on the Gulf of Mexico. The research recorded over 8000 species in that area. It also recorded where these species lived and how they travelled. After the spill, this basic information became very important. It has been key to understanding how the oil affected ocean life. Over the next few years, scientists can use this information to study the long-term effects of the oil spill. We will learn more about how human activity affects marine life, and how we can improve and repair ocean health.
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