VOA常速英语:Recycling Oyster Shells Improves Water Quality, Oyster Population

Oysters are a popular item on many seafood restaurant menus and Mike’s Crab House in Riva Maryland is no exception.
牡蛎是很多海鲜餐厅的热门菜品，马里兰州里瓦的麦克的螃蟹屋也不例外。

It’s one of more than 330 restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC that now recycle their oyster shells.A win-win for us. It’s a win-win for the environment.Mike’s Crab House is one of the top 10 contributors to the program which began in 2010 with 22 restaurants.They make the list every year. They recycled 822 bushels this year which is an amazing, amazing number.
马里兰州、弗吉尼亚州和华盛顿共有330多家餐厅可以回收牡蛎壳，麦克的螃蟹屋就是其中之一。不论对我们还是对环境，这都是双赢。麦克的螃蟹屋在回收牡蛎壳上的贡献量居于前十，回收牡蛎壳活动由22家餐厅发起于2010年。他们每年都会制作排行榜。今年他们一共回收了822蒲式耳的牡蛎壳，这数据真的太太惊人了。

I think I’m getting more customers here because they know I’m recycling them and they know it’s good for the environment the Chesapeake back.Tony Price picks up the discarded oyster shells twice a week.He trucks them to a facility where another phase of the process begins.I think today we had about 130 bushels in the truck which is at capacity for it.It sits for about a year kind of dries out.Sun, wind, rain kind of just decomposes a little bit all the tissue that’s left. Behind us is the shell washer. Their jets of high-pressure water from a pressure washing system tumbles the shell just really gives it a nice cleaning, so it comes out brilliant white like this.
我觉得我店里的客人越来越多，因为他们知道我回收牡蛎壳，他们也知道这对于切萨皮克的环境有益。托尼·普莱斯每两周就会收集一次弃置的牡蛎壳。他用卡车把牡蛎壳运送到一个设备点，在这里进行回收牡蛎的第二个步骤。我们目前这个卡车的容量是130蒲式耳，现在已经满负荷了。牡蛎壳大约花上一年的时间变干。太阳、风、雨水都会稍稍分解一下牡蛎壳。我们后面的这个是一个牡蛎壳清洗机。高压水从高压清洗系统中喷射到牡蛎壳上，将牡蛎壳洗的很干净。所以，牡蛎壳从这出来的时候洁白夺目，就像这样。

We’re supposed to the stuff on the other side. It’s the the raw shell basically.That’s a little bit grayer.These shells will become an oyster nursery.Inside the Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn point oyster hatchery, workers are getting larva ready to be attached to the clean oyster shells.
我们要的是另一边的东西。这基本上就是原生的牡蛎壳了。有一点灰色。这些壳子将成为牡蛎的温床。在马里兰州环境科学中心的角点牡蛎孵化场内，工人们正准备将幼虫附着在干净的牡蛎壳上。

We get adult oysters. We spawn them and create the babies and then we grow those baby oysters for about two to three weeks, then they mature and then we attach them to shells.The tiny baby oysters called spat now firmly attached to the recycled natural shells, are then put back in the Chesapeake Bay.Here they’ll grow and flourish, increasing the oyster population while the man-made reef of recycled shells helps filter the bay water and provides a home for other underwater creatures.
我们弄到成年牡蛎后，让他们产卵，孵化出小的牡蛎，我们让小牡蛎生长大约两到三周。接着小的牡蛎成熟，我们就把它们附着到牡蛎壳上。这些叫做“spat”小牡蛎就紧紧附着在回收的牡蛎壳上，然后再把它们放回到切萨皮克湾。在这儿，牡蛎不断繁殖，数量变多，同时，人造的回收牡蛎礁可以帮助过滤海湾水，给其他水生生物提供住所。

Faiza Elmasry and Faith Lapidus, VOA news
美国之音新闻，Faiza Elmasry和Faith Lapidus报道。