48. Earth's Last Frontier: The Sea（海洋，地球最后的待开发疆域）
　　1. "We've all gone a little crazy about the outer space2 business," says Vice¹ Admiral C.B. Momsen. "The ocean is the place where we should be putting our efforts in order to provide for future generations.''
　　1、“我们都对那些外太空的事情有些狂热，”海军上将C、B、Momsen说，“为了供养子孙后代，海洋才是我们应该投入努力的地方。”
　　2. Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface is covered by water. An observer, looking at the earth from another planet, would be likely to call it Oceanus. If all the continents and mountains were bulldozed flat, the earth would be covered by water more than 12,000 feet deep.
　　2、地球表面的百分之七十一被水覆盖。一个观测者从另一个行星看地球将可能称其为海洋之神。如果所有的大陆和山脉被推平，那么地球表面将被一层超过12000英尺深的水所覆盖。
　　3. Sea and air are divided by a viscous² curtain; beneath the curtain is an element weighing 800 times as much as air, utterly³ dark a few fathoms⁴ down, and with pressures that would pulp⁵ a man at 3,000 feet. Yet we know that many animals live in the deeps at pressures of 15,000 pounds per square inch.
　　3、海洋和空气被一种粘性的“帘布”分开，“帘布”之下是一种比空气重800倍的成分，向下几英嚼完全黑暗，在3000英尺深处的压力会把人压成酱。然而，我们知道很多动物生活在每英寸15000磅压力的深处。
　　4. As a life environment, the sea is a kind of land turned upside down. The sunlit pastures are at the top, where the water is saturated⁶ with tiny drifting vegetables, phytoplankton, and equally minute animals, zooplankton. The athletic⁷ animals come up to graze in this fertile prairie and become links in extensive food chains, formed roughly along the lines3 suggested by Shakespeare:
　　4、作为一个生命环境，海洋如同一块倒转过来的陆地。阳光普照的牧场在上面，这里的海水中充满着微小的漂浮植物，也就是浮游植物，以及同样微小的动物、即浮游动物。运动的动物从下层海水中游上来，到这块肥沃的“牧场”上觅食，构成了广阔的食物链中的环节。这些大致如同莎士比亚的剧本台词中所说：
　　5. "Master, I marvel⁸ how the fishes live in the sea."
　　5、“主人，我惊讶鱼怎么在大海里生存。”
　　6. "Why, as we do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones."
　　6、“为什么?如同我们陆地上的所做：大的总是吃小的。”
　　7. The food chains extend to the abyss. The most amazing fact about this inverted⁹ life pyramid is that only 2% of the nutritive matter ends up in swimming fish. The rest falls to the invertebrates¹⁰: pulsing jelly fish, darting¹¹ shrimp¹², fixed¹³ colonies5 of coral polyps, and crawlers and diggers of the floor. There are about 30,000 known species of marine¹⁴ life, and marine biologists discover more than 100 new ones each year.
　　7、食物链一直延伸到深渊。最令人惊奇的事是这个反向倒转的生命金字塔里仅仅2％的营养物质在游动的鱼嘴里终结。其余部分落入无脊椎动物嘴中：脉动式水母、刺虾、珊瑚虫群、海底的爬行动物和潜在泥中的动物。现在已经知道的海洋生命大约有30000种，而且海洋生物学家们每年都会发现超过100种新的海洋物种。
　　8. One main branch of sea science, physical oceanography, holds enormous unanswered questions. The nature of the bottom, the circulation of the deep currents, and the chemistry of the water are poorly understood.
　　8、海洋科学的一个主要分枝，物理海洋学，有为数众多的未解之题。(我们对)海底的自然生态、深海水流的循环，以及海水化学目前都知之甚少。
　　9. The Atlantic hydrographic chart is being revised continuously, and nuclear submarines are now charting the Arctic basin under the ice. Yet vast areas of the Pacific are unmapped and the Indian Ocean has hardly been touched. We know that several depressions in the floor are deeper than Mt. Everest is high, but we cannot be sure that we have found the deepest one.
　　9、大西洋水文图在持续不断地被修订，核潜艇现在正在冰卞进行北极海盆的测绘。然而，太平洋的大片海域还没有海底地图，印度洋甚至尚未被着手(测绘)。我们已经知道有几个海床坑处的深度高于珠穆朗玛峰的高度，但是我们不能确定我们已经找到了海底最深的地方。
　　10. Consider the abyssal valley called the Marianas Trench¹⁵, lying west of Guam. In 1951, the British Challenger expedition sounded6 33,640 feet at one place in the trench. In 1957 the Soviet¹⁶ ship Vitiaz sounded 300 feet deeper at another place nearby, and later the Russian vessel¹⁷ found a spot 225 feet deeper than that.
　　10、留心一下位于关岛西面的名叫马利亚纳海沟的深海谷地。1951年，英国挑战者探险队测到海沟的一个地方有33640英尺深。1957年，苏联船Vitiaz号测到在附近的另一个地方比上处更深300英尺。其后，俄国船发现另一个地点比刚才那个还深225英尺。
　　11. The French navy has built an abyssal bathyscaphe to take three men to the floor of the Marianas Trench. It seems certain that no human observers will ever get closer to the core of the earth than these men. The world's deepest land shaft¹⁸ accessible to men is the Champion Reef gold mine in India, which is only 9,811 feet deep.
　　11、法国海军已经建造了一个深海潜水器，用来装载三个人去到马利亚纳海沟的基底。看来很确定的是，不会再有任何其他观测者能比这三个人更接近地球的核心。世界上最深的，人可以到达的陆基深井是在印度的Champion Reef金矿，深度仅仅9811英尺。
　　12. The depthmen will measure cosmic ray penetration¹⁹ of the sea, radioactivity, and the age of the water in the abyss. They may also make still and motion pictures of the trench, take water and sedimental temperatures, and perhaps sight no one knows what living creatures in that perpetual night. Serious scientists like Sir Alister Hardy²⁰ of Oxford²¹ do not rule out the possibility that there are sea monsters to be discovered. A few years ago divers²², working in a wreck²³ under the Red Sea, several times sighted a wrasse 20 feet long. This is a common vegetarian²⁴ species, never before found more than three feet long.
　　12、深入海底的人将在深海测量宇宙射线对海水的穿透力、放射性活动，以及海水的年龄。他们还要对海沟摄像摄影，测量水和沉积物的温度，也许还能观测到那永恒黑夜下中不为人知的生物。像牛津大学的Alister Hardy先生—样严谨的科学家们没有排除在那里海洋怪物被发现的可能性。几年前，在红海底一只沉船里工作的潜水员几次看到一条20英尺长的濑鱼。这是一种常见的草食的鱼类，以前从来没有发现过有超过3英尺长的(这种鱼)。
　　13. The recent discovery of an eel²⁵ larva many times the size of the common one may furnish a basis for stories of sea serpents. The mature eel has not been discovered, but it could possibly come in sea serpent dimensions.
　　13、最近“一条幼龄鳗鱼其尺寸是普通鳗鱼的很多倍”的发现，可能提供了“深海大毒蛇”故事的依据。成熟的此类鳗鱼还没有被发现过，但是估计其尺寸很可能达到“深海大毒蛇”的水平。
　　14. One aspect of oceanography that has fallen into neglect is that of identifying fish: taxonomy. It is considered dull work to catalogue fish. One of the great taxonomists is J.L.B. Smith of South Africa, the discoverer of the fabulous²⁶ coelacanth. This brute²⁷ was brought up by fishermen off East Africa and aroused the curiosity of the curator of a provincial²⁸ museum, who sent a sketch²⁹ of it to Smith. He instantly identified it as a coelacanth, a species believed extinct for 60 million years. Somewhere in his files, Smith recalled seeing the animal as an empty fossil split from a rock.
　　14、海洋学的—个已经被忽视的领域是“对鱼进行分类鉴别”：分类学。它被认为是一种将鱼进行分门别类的乏味的工作。南非的J、L、B、Smith是世界上最好的分类学家之一，他是令人难以置信的腔棘鱼的发现者。这种鱼被渔民在东部非洲捕上来，随即引起省立博物馆馆长的好奇心，他寄给了Smith先生一份腔棘鱼的素描图。Smith先生立刻鉴别出它是腔棘鱼，一种被认为6000万年前已灭绝的物种。在他的文档某处，Smith先生回忆道“这个动物看上去像一个从岩石上剥离下来的化石”。
　　15. Almost everything we know or think we know—about the sea is open? at both ends. The questions themselves may be wrong, and many of the answers are under challenge. Take the theory of photosynthesis³⁰, which holds that the growth of all vegetation, and consequently of animals, depends on the action of the sun on carbon dioxide and water.
　　15、关于海洋，几乎我们知道的一切，或者我们认为已经知道的一切问题，其实在两个方面都尚需考虑。这些问题本身可能就是错误的，同时，很多问题的答案在面对置疑。拿“光合作用”理论来说，这个理论认为所有植物成长、进而乃至动物，都依赖于太阳对二氧化碳和水的作用。
　　16. A French zoologist³¹, Professor Brouardel, has preliminary evidence that some marine animals of the abyss thrive in the blackness without any discernible action of photosynthesis. It will take him years of the most painstaking³² instrument building, campaigns at sea, and every conceivable cross-check to establish the doubt. Only if these negative results are valid³³ will he be able to formulate³⁴ the question: how do they live, if not by photosynthesis? Then the study can begin.
　　16、一个法国动物学家Brouardel教授，获得了初步的证据，证明某些深海海洋动物在漆黑的、没有任何可辨识的“光合作用”行为(的环境)下茁壮成长。他将要花费多年时间，从事最艰苦的设备制造、海中活动、反复核对的工作，以确立这个(对光合作用理论的)“置疑”。只有当这些否定的结论被确认时他才能开始阐述这个问题：如果不是依赖“光合作用”，深海海洋动物怎样生存?之后，研究就会开始。
　　17. Unable to see the underwater world until recently, oceanographers have relied on blind groping into the 'depths. They lowered nets, dredges, bathythermographs, still cameras, water bottles, coring pipes, and current meters. Today continuous recording³⁵ instruments from a ship underway are able to bring up data from a long strip of the sea.
　　17、直到今天仍然不能看见这个水下世界，海洋学家必须依赖盲目地暗中摸索进入深海。他们沉降下去网、挖掘机、深海温度测量器、静态照相机、水瓶、以及取心钻管和测流计。今天，在长途海上航行中，船载连续记录设备能够获取数据。
　　18. Water itself is vital to the future of the race. Not too far in the future, science will crack the water atom for nuclear energy, and, before then, power will be coming from harnessing tides and thermal³⁶ exchanges under water.
　　18、水本身就是人类未来的至关重要的因素。在不太远的将来，科学将为了核能源而裂变水中的原子，在那之前，电力将来自水下潮汐绳索和水下热交换(技术)。
　　19. The sea is the realm of inner space. It is our last frontier.
　　19、海洋是(我们的)内部空间领域。它是我们最后的待开发疆域。

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