November 10,2020
For the past two years, the charismatic marine mammals have washed up on Pacific shores in record numbers. Scientists investigating the strandings suspect warming waters and melting sea ice are partly to blame.
在過去的兩年裡，這些魅力四射的海洋哺乳動物以創紀錄的數量被衝上太平洋海岸。調查擱淺的科學家們懷疑海水變暖和海冰融化是部分原因。
luish-tinged tongue lolling out, the gray whale lay in near silence on the sand of Long Beach, Washington. The rhythmic whap, whap, whap of small waves lapping its belly punctuated the silence. An oily, rotten odor surrounded the behemoth, which tipped the scales at 2,200 kilograms, the equivalent of four heavy-duty SUVs. It was April of 2019, and this whale was one of 34 that Jessie Huggins, who coordinates responses to marine mammal strandings in Washington State, helped to photograph, dissect, and discard that year. Finding a few gray whales washed up on the coast each year is common, she says, but last year 215 of them washed up along the marine mammal’s migration route between Alaska and Baja. And so far this year, there have been more than 160 strandings.
在華盛頓長灘的沙灘上，這條灰鯨懶洋洋地伸出舌頭，近乎無聲地躺著。小波浪有節奏地拍打著它的肚皮，打破了寂靜。這隻巨獸身上散發著一股油膩的腐爛氣味，重達2200公斤，相當於四輛重型suv。那是2019年4月，華盛頓州負責協調海洋哺乳動物擱淺問題的傑西·哈金斯在當年幫助拍攝、解剖和丟棄了34頭鯨魚，這隻鯨魚就是其中之一。她說，每年發現一些灰鯨被衝到海岸上是很常見的，但去年有215頭灰鯨被衝到阿拉斯加和巴哈之間的海洋哺乳動物遷徙路線上。今年到目前為止，已經有160多處擱淺。
「Something’s clearly going on,」 says Sue Moore, an ecologist at the University of Washington who has studied gray whales for decades. 「You』ve got a big uptick in the number of animals that we’re seeing dead on the beach.」
華盛頓大學研究灰鯨數十年的生態學家Sue Moore說:「很明顯，有些事情正在發生。」「我們看到海灘上死去的動物數量大幅上升。」
Startled by the rapid rise in deaths, Moore and a team of scientists from the US, Mexico, and Canada have begun collating data from decades of past research on the species, Eschrichtius robustus. They’re also collecting and analyzing samples from stranded individuals, tracking booms and busts in the gray whale population, and studying changes in the animal’s feeding habitats, determined to identify what exactly is killing the marine giants.
死亡鯨魚的迅速上升讓Moore和一隊來自美國、墨西哥和加拿大的科學家們感到震驚，他們開始整理過去幾十年裡有關該物種的研究數據。他們還收集和分析擱淺個體的樣本，跟蹤灰鯨種群數量的激增和下降，研究這種動物進食棲息地的變化，以確定究竟是什麼導致了這種海洋巨鯨的死亡。
In addition to possibly helping to save the whales, says biologist John Calambokidis, one of the founders of the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective where Huggins works, understanding their deaths could be an 「incredibly key indicator of . . . changing conditions in our whole global environment.」
生物學家John Calambokidis說，除了可能有助於拯救鯨魚，了解它們的死亡可能是一個「令人難以置信的關鍵指標…有助於我們了解整個全球環境不斷變化的條件。」