科技板块--水产养殖：大规模种植海草(下)

Moreover, seaweed farms bring benefits beyond the immediate value of their crop.

此外，海草养殖场带来的效益超出了其作物的直接价值。

Seaweed is a habitat for many marine creatures, including fish.

海草是包括鱼类在内的许多海洋生物的栖息地。

Some of these can be harvested for food.

其中一些可以作为人类的食物。

Indeed, for artificial upwelling to bring about that desirable state of affairs it may not even be necessary to farm seaweed.

事实上，人工上涌要想达到这种理想状态，甚至都不需要养殖海草。

Ocean artUp, a project led by the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, is experimenting with the use of upwelling to encourage the growth of the small, planktonic creatures eaten by sardines.

由德国基尔亥姆霍兹海洋研究中心领导的“海洋艺术行动”项目，正在试验利用上升洋流来促进被沙丁鱼吃掉的小型浮游生物的生长。

That could help restore stocks of these fish, which are shrinking rapidly in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

这可能有助于恢复这些鱼类的数量，大西洋和地中海地区的这些鱼类都在迅速减少。

Ocean artUp, which began in 2017 and is scheduled to run until the end of this year, has concentrated on simulating and measuring exactly how artificial upwelling affects the quantities of nutrients transferred between ocean layers.

“海洋艺术行动”于2017年启动，预计将持续到今年年底，主要致力于模拟和准确测量人工上涌如何影响海洋层间营养物转移的数量。

One thing the project’s researchers have discovered is that if you pump too hard, some of the upwelled water simply drops back into the depths, without mixing properly.

该项目的研究人员发现的一件事是，如果泵压过高，一些上涌的海水还没来得及与表层海水融合就会回落至海洋深处。

Stirring the ocean in this way may thus require the design of floating water-mixers, too, to keep the nutrients at the surface.

用这种方式搅动海洋可能还需要设计一个漂浮的海水混合器，确保营养物质能停留在海面上。

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Otherlab, an independent research laboratory, is working on an underwater robot intended to screw large tethers firmly into the seabed, to ensure that floating seaweed farms stay put, and can better survive stormy weather.

与此同时，在旧金山，一家名为Otherlab的独立研究实验室正在研究一种水下机器人，它可以将大缆绳牢牢地固定在海床上，以确保漂浮的海藻养殖场留在原地，并且对暴风雨天气的承受能力更强。

Otherlab is part of a consortium paid for by ARPA-e, an American-government agency that is exploring the idea of using seaweed as a source of biofuel.

Otherlab是美国政府机构ARPA-e资助的一个财团的一部分，该财团正在探索将海藻当做生物燃料这个想法。

Those squeamish about anything that smacks of geoengineering—in other words, technology intended to change the world’s climate in ways that oppose global warming—view artificial upwelling with scepticism.

那些对任何带有地质工程色彩的东西——换句话说，就是以反对全球变暖的方式来改变世界气候的技术——过于拘谨的人，都对人工上涌持怀疑态度。

They argue that it could damage other parts of ocean ecosystems, and might even create unwanted side-effects that end up accelerating climate change rather than slowing it.

他们认为，这可能会破坏海洋生态系统的其他部分，甚至可能产生不必要的副作用，最终加速而不是减缓气候变化。

Proponents, conversely, see these early efforts, at least, as simply restoring upwelling that has been suppressed by climate change.

相反，支持者认为这些早期的努力，至少只是简单地恢复了被气候变化抑制的海水上涌。

A study published last year in Nature Climate Change, by a team of researchers from America and China, suggested that the overall stratification of the world’s oceans has increased by 5% since 1960, with up to 20% more stratification in the tropics.

去年发表在《自然气候变化》杂志上的一项研究表明，自1960年以来，世界海洋的整体分层增加了5%，热带地区的分层增加了20%。

This is despite any countervailing effect of the more extreme weather that global warming brings, which leads to greater churning of the oceans.

尽管全球变暖带来了更极端的天气，导致了海洋更剧烈的搅动，但仍有抵消作用。

Any such churning is overwhelmed by the extra buoyancy of the warmer surface layers.

海洋的任何搅动都被表层海水所增加的浮力给掩盖了。

Cooling the ocean surface by encouraging upwelling might also have a direct effect on the local air temperature.

促进海水上涌来冷却海洋表面也可能对当地气温产生直接影响。

Warmer surface waters keep the atmosphere above warmer, too. Cooler waters do the reverse.

温暖的水面上方的大气也会更加温暖。较凉的水则相反。

But the technology would have to be deployed on a vast scale—over millions of hectares of the ocean’s surface—before it had a noticeable effect on the atmosphere.

但这项技术必须大规模应用——在数百万公顷的海洋表面，才能对大气产生显著影响。

As Dr von Herzen, who does not advocate geoengineering, points out, any such plans would face more than just economic barriers.

正如不提倡地质工程的冯·赫尔岑博士所指出的那样，任何类似的计划面临的都不仅仅是经济障碍。

The London Protocol, an international legal framework that regulates marine pollution, sets stringent limits on deliberate geoengineering of the oceans.

《伦敦公约议定书》是一个管理海洋污染的国际法律框架，对蓄意进行海洋地质工程设定了严格的限制。

The protocol does, however, tolerate justifiable commercial exploitation, along with some carbon capture.

然而，该协议确实允许合理的商业开发，以及一些碳捕获。

If large-scale seaweed farming were, nevertheless, to be considered for geoengineering, there would be a certain irony in that fact.

然而，如果大规模海草养殖被看成地质工程，那么这一事实将具有一定的讽刺意味。

To do this would mean dumping the algae thus grown on the ocean floor, to stop the carbon in them returning to the atmosphere.

要做到这一点，就意味着将通过这种方法生长的藻类倾倒在海底，以阻止它们中所含的碳返回到大气中。

That would probably work in the short term.

这在短期内可能行得通。

But it was just such a process of sedimentation of organic matter which, over millions of years, produced modern-day petroleum fields.

但正是这样一个有机物质的沉积过程，在数百万年的时间里，产生了现代的油田。

And it is their oil, furiously pumped up for over a century, that has generated much of the excess of greenhouse gases of which the world is now trying to rid itself.

而且，正是它们所产生的石油，在一个多世纪里被疯狂地开采，产生了大量过剩的温室气体，而世界现在正试图摆脱这些气体。