In New Zealand, southern right whales were hunted to near extinction¹ about a century ago. Since that time, the population has slowly recovered.

在新西兰，南露脊鲸在大约一个世纪前被捕杀至濒临灭绝。但自那时起，其数量就缓慢回升。

 

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.

艾玛·卡罗尔博士       新西兰奥克兰大学

“我是艾玛·卡罗尔博士。我是一个名为 ‘Tohora no Aotearoa’ 的研究项目的首席科学家，这是一个毛利语短语，意思是 ‘新西兰南露脊鲸’。我们在2009年估计约有2000头鲸鱼。

 

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

然而，在过去十年间，没有人真正回去查看它们。

 

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，我们在这些鲸鱼的主要越冬地开展了调查，即新西兰主岛以南450公里的奥克兰群岛。”

 

Dr Emma Carroll, University of Auckland

So, what we did is we used satellite tags to track their migrations³ out of that Auckland Islands wintering ground and follow them around the Southern Ocean.

艾玛·卡罗尔博士       新西兰奥克兰大学

“我们使用了卫星追踪装置来跟踪它们从奥克兰群岛的越冬地迁移出来的过程，并跟踪它们到了南冰洋周围。

 

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 migration² patterns, and instead, most of them actually go west.

这些鲸鱼身上的装置仍在传送信号，我们也仍在收集大量数据，但目前的发现相当惊人。我们知道，新西兰的南露脊鲸向来会在春夏月份迁徙到新西兰的北部和东部。然而，没有任何一头被我们追踪的鲸鱼显示出了这种迁移模式，相反，它们中的大多数其实是向西迁移的。”

 

[Surprisingly one whale, dubbed⁴ Bill, kept transmitting for a year. He went on the longest migration ever recorded for the species. 令人惊讶的是，一头名叫比尔的鲸鱼在一年内持续传送信号。它进行了有记录以来该物种距离最长的迁徙。]

 

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 prey⁵ one 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.

艾玛·卡罗尔博士       新西兰奥克兰大学

“所以，这些结果其实非常重要，让我们对该鲸鱼物种生出希望，因为鲸鱼比尔或威勒姆其实是在澳大利亚南部和南极海岸一带觅食的。这就意味着，也许其中的一个地区一年内情况不佳，没有什么猎物，但也许其它地点有，所以这体现了鲸鱼的适应力。因此，这给了我们希望：即使海洋不断变化，这些鲸鱼也有不只一种策略来寻找大量食物。

 

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.

这件事让我引以为傲：我们正在使用这些现代工具来获得鲸鱼的真正全貌，不仅了解它们数量上的回升，还包括它们利用海洋的方式。我们能够把两方面结合起来，从而对该物种数量的现状和未来的发展有很好的认识。”

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