Fishing

Stopping some fishing would increase overall catches、

停止一些捕鱼会增加总体捕获量

You can have your hake and eat it

这样能吃到更多的鳕鱼

词汇

Hake/鳕鱼类

Oct 31st 2020 | 

IN 2018, THE most recent year for which relevant data are available, people consumed more fish than they did either pork or beef or poultry. Humanity’s appetite for the sea’s bounty has more than doubled since 1990. Fish, whether wild caught or farmed, now make up nearly a fifth of the animal protein that human beings eat.

2018年，也就是有相关数据可查的最近一年，人们消费的鱼类超过了猪肉、牛肉或家禽。自1990年以来，人类对海洋资源的需求增加了一倍多。鱼，无论是野生捕获的还是养殖的，现在占了人类食用动物蛋白的近五分之一。

词汇

Poultry/家禽；家禽肉

bounty /慷慨；丰富；奖励金；赠款

In this context, running the world’s fisheries efficiently might seem a sensible idea. In practice, that rarely happens. Even well-governed coastal countries often pander to their fishing lobbies by setting quotas which give little respite to battered piscine populations. Those with weak or corrupt governments may not even bother with this. Deals abound that permit outsiders legal but often badly monitored access to such countries’ waters. And many rogue vessels simply enter other people’s fishing grounds and steal their contents.

在这种情况下，有效地管理世界渔业似乎是一个明智的想法。实际上，这种情况很少发生。即使是管理良好的沿海国家也经常通过设定配额来迎合他们的渔业游说团体，而这些配额几乎没有给遭受重创的鱼群数量提供喘息的机会。那些受软弱或腐败政府监管的人甚至不会为此烦恼。大量交易允许外来者合法进入这些国家的水域，但往往受到严格的监控。许多流氓船直接进入别人的渔场，偷走里面的东西。

词汇

pander /迎合；勾引

 piscine /鱼的

Abound/大量存在，有许多

rogue /流氓；小淘气

Vessel/船，舰；[组织] 脉管，血管

 

The demand side of the equation, then, has many problems. But there may be a way to improve the supply side: increase the area where fishing is forbidden altogether.

因此，这个等式的需求方存在许多问题。但是有一种方法可以改善供给:增加完全禁止捕鱼的区域。

 

This paradoxical approach, which involves the creation of so-called marine protected areas (MPAs), has already been demonstrated on several occasions to work locally. Valuable fish stocks off Apo island in the Philippines increased significantly after a no-take reserve was created in 1982, and similar results have been forthcoming off the coasts of Florida, South Africa and St Lucia. Extrapolating from these examples, Reniel Cabral of the University of California, Santa Barbara and his colleagues have, as they describe in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, built a model which explores the idea of extending MPAs elsewhere. If the right extensions are picked, their model suggests, designating a mere 5% more of the world’s oceans as MPAs—which would triple the area protected—could increase the future global catch of the 811 species they looked at by more than 20%. That corresponds to an extra 10m tonnes of food a year.

这种自相矛盾的办法涉及建立所谓的【海洋保护区】(MPAs后期该词在本文多次出现，表示海洋保护区的意思)，已经在几个场合被证明在当地有效。在1982年建立禁捕保护区之后，菲律宾阿波岛附近的宝贵鱼类资源显著增加，在佛罗里达、南非和圣卢西亚海岸附近也出现了类似的结果。根据这些例子，加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的Reniel Cabral和他的同事们，正如他们在《美国国家科学院院刊》上描述的那样，建立了一个模型来探索将海洋保护区扩展到其他地方的想法。他们的模型表明，如果选择正确的扩展范围，将世界上仅5%的海洋指定为海洋保护区——这将使受保护的面积增加三倍——将使他们所研究的811种物种未来的全球捕获量增加20%以上。这相当于每年增加1000万吨捕鱼量。

词汇

Forthcoming/即将来临的；来临

 

The idea that restricting fishing would permit more fish to be caught may seem counterintuitive, but the logic is simple. Fish in MPAs can grow larger than those at constant risk of being pulled from the ocean. Larger fish produce more eggs. More eggs mean more fry. Many of these youngsters then grow up and move out of the safe zone, thus becoming available to catch in adjoining areas where fishing is permitted.

从直觉上看，限制捕鱼似乎与捕到更多的鱼相矛盾，但是逻辑上很好解释。在海洋保护区里的鱼可以长得比那些经常冒着被拖出海洋的风险的鱼更大。大鱼产卵更多。更多的卵代表了更多的鱼苗。这些小鱼中有许多长大后就会离开安全水域，从而可以在允许捕鱼的邻近地区被捕捞。

词汇

Counterintuitive/违反直觉的

Fry/（除了表示炸例如fried chicken炸鸡，这里表鱼苗的意思）

Dr Cabral and his team based their calculations on data they compiled for 1,338 stocks of fish and marine invertebrates. For each they mapped the geographical range, mobility and population growth of the local species, and assessed the sustainability of present-day fishing levels. That let them create a model of the ocean from which the impact of changes in fishable area could be assessed. Working at a fairly coarse resolution—each pixel corresponding to a square of ocean 55km across—they discovered that a small, well-aimed increase in the size of MPAs brought substantial benefit.

Cabral博士和他的团队根据他们收集的1338种鱼类和海洋无脊椎动物的数据进行了计算。每一次他们都绘制了当地物种的地理范围、流动性和种群增长，并评估了当今捕鱼水平的可持续性。这让他们创建了一个海洋模型，从这个模型可以评估可捕鱼区域变化的影响。在相当粗糙的分辨率下计算——每个像素相当于55立方公里海洋——他们发现，适当地增加海洋保护区的规模会带来大量的好处。

词汇

Invertebrate/无脊椎动物；无骨气的人

Coarse/粗糙的

Resolution/ 分辨率

pixel /像素

substantial /大量的；实质的

Less is more

井干方知水珍贵/物以稀为贵

  

Though MPAs work their magic on all sorts of fishing grounds, Dr Cabral’s model suggests they are especially beneficial for the worst-managed areas, most of which are tropical—and in particular for overfished species such as Atlantic horse mackerels, Japanese anchovies and Argentine hake (the catch pictured on the previous page).

尽管海洋保护区在各种渔场都发挥着神奇的作用，但Cabral博士的模型表明，海洋保护区对管理最糟糕的地区尤其有利，这些地区大多是热带地区，尤其是对过度捕捞的物种，如大西洋马鲭鱼、日本凤尾鱼和阿根廷鳕鱼(捕捞图见封面)。

 

They also have the virtue of simplicity. The setting of quotas is open to pressure to overestimate of how many fish can safely be caught. And different species need different arrangements, making management harder. The breeding habits of the fish concerned must be monitored, and good estimates made of their numbers. This is difficult enough for countries with well-developed fisheries-research establishments. For those without such it is little more than guesswork. And the problem is made yet more complicated by the fact that tropical ecosystems are more speciose and thus harder to understand and manage than those in temperate climes.

它们还有简单的优点。配额的设定面临着过高估计可安全捕获鱼类数量的压力。不同的物种需要不同的配额，这使得管理更加困难。必须对相关鱼类的繁殖习性进行监测，并对它们的数量作出良好的估计。这对于拥有发达渔业研究机构的国家来说已经够困难的了。对于那些没有这样做的人来说，这只不过是猜测而已。热带生态系统比温带生态系统更加物种多样化，因此更难理解和管理，这使得问题更加复杂。

词汇

Quota/定额；限额

breeding /繁殖；饲养

Speciose/这里只查到了species-物种；种类。应该是表示物种多样

Setting the rules for an MPA is, by contrast, easy. You stick up a metaphorical sign that says, “No fishing”. Knowing who is breaking the rules is easy, too. If your gear is in the water, you are fishing illegally.

相比之下，为海洋保护区设置规则则很容易。你贴一个隐喻的标志说，“禁止钓鱼”。知道谁违反了规则也很容易。如果你的渔具在水里，你就是非法捕鱼。

词汇

 metaphorical /比喻性的，隐喻性的

There are, Dr Cabral and his team readily admit, limitations to their model. Not all fish stocks are equally well recorded, meaning many pertinent species escaped the analysis. Including these would more than double the underlying tonnage of catch being looked at, and might reasonably be presumed to add to the increase in yield that the model already predicts. Also, though good data exist about the movement of fish around the world’s oceans, where they spawn is less well understood. As spawning grounds are prime sites for MPAs, this uncertainty muddies the waters.

 Cabral 博士和他的团队承认，他们的模型存在局限性。并不是所有的鱼类资源都有同样好的记录，这意味着许多相关的物种没有被分析。如果将这些因素包括在内，将使所研究的渔获量的潜在吨数增加一倍以上，并可能合理地推测会增加该模型已经预测的产量增长。此外，尽管有关于鱼类在世界各大洋中移动的完备数据，但人们对它们在哪里产卵却知之甚少。由于产卵地是海洋保护区的主要地点，这种不确定性使海水变得捉摸不透。

词汇

Tonnage/吨位，载重量；排水量

Spawn/产卵

The researchers’ hope, though, is that—perhaps inspired by this study—some governments will now think it worthwhile to conduct more detailed investigations of their own. If a bit more protection results in a lot more fish, everybody wins.

然而，研究人员的希望是——也许受到这项研究的启发——一些政府现在会认为值得自己进行更详细的调查（制定保护区/捕捞限额）。如果更多的保护措施能带来更多的鱼，那则是所有人都将受益。