Mining the deep ocean will soon begin
深海开采即将开始
Conservation and seabed mineralsMining the deep ocean will soon begin
保护和开采深海矿物的行动即将进行
What will that mean for existing denizens of the abyss?
这对深海的“居民们”会有什么影响呢
denizens:an animal, plant, or person that lives in or is often in a particular place
e.g:The department employed buggy drivers and route riders to deliver the mail directly to the homes of rural denizens.
DIVA AMON, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, spotted her first whale skull in 2013, during an expedition to the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the tropical Pacific. It sat on beige silt, some 4,000 metres beneath the sea’s surface, and was entirely covered in a black coating. Her find was twice notable. First, the skull’s coating meant it was millions of years old, for it was made of the same slowly accumulating metallic oxides as the potato-like ore nodules that are drawing miners to the area. Second, the discovery highlighted how little is known about the deep ocean. Dr Amon’s whale skull, and others like it, raise questions about the trade-offs between the economic gains of mining the seabed and that mining’s environmental consequences.
notable:important and deserving attention, because of being very good or interesting
ore:rock or soil from which metal can be obtained:
nodule:a small raised area or swelling
伦敦一家自然历史博物馆的研究者Diva Amon,在2013年前往热带太平洋克拉利翁克利珀顿带(Clarion Clipperton Zone)的一次考察中第一次发现了一只鲸鱼的头骨，它坐落在米色的淤泥上，在海面下约4000米，全身覆盖着一层黑色的涂层。她的发现更引人注目是首先，头骨的涂层意味着它已经有几百万年的历史了，因为它是由和土豆般大的能吸引矿工们来此的矿石块一样，由金属氧化物缓慢积累而成，其次，这一发现突显出人们对深海知之甚少。阿蒙博士发现的鲸鱼头骨，以及其他类似的东西，向人类提出了海底采矿的经济收益与采矿对环境的影响之间的权衡问题。
Those involved in deep-sea mining hope it will turn into a multi-billion dollar industry. Seabed nodules are dominated by compounds of iron (which is commonplace) and manganese (which is rarer, but not in short supply from mines on dry land). However, the nodules also contain copper, nickel and cobalt, and sometimes other metals such as molybdenum and vanadium. These are in sufficient demand that visiting the bottom of the ocean to acquire them looks a worthwhile enterprise. Moreover, these metals seldom co-occur in terrestrial mines. So, as Kris Van Nijen, who runs deep-sea mining operations at Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), a company interested in exploiting the nodules, observes: “For the same amount of effort, you get the same metals as two or three mines on land.”
terrestrial:relating to the planet earth, or living or existing on the land rather than in the sea or air
那些参与到深海开采的人想要把它转变成一个市值几十亿美金的产业。海床矿石块主要是由铁的化合物（这是比较常见的）和锰的化合物（这更稀有一些，但是陆地上还未到短缺的地步）。然而，这些矿石块还含有铜元素，镍元素和钴元素，有时还含有其他金属，例如钼和钒。这些元素市场需求庞大，去深海中获取这些元素，看上去是个划算的买卖。此外，这些金属很少会同时出现在陆地上的矿井里。因此，正如全球海洋矿产资源公司(GSR)深海采矿业务负责人克里斯•范尼扬(Kris Van Nijen)所说到的那样：“你只需付出同等的努力，就能获取和陆地上两三座矿山一样多的金属了。”
Hades’ hall
Though their location several kilometres beneath the ocean surface makes the nodules hard to get at in one sense, in another they are easily accessible, because they sit invitingly on the seabed, almost begging to be collected. Most are found on parts of the ocean floor like the CCZ, outside the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones of littoral countries. They thus fall under the purview of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which has issued 17 exploration licences for such resources. All but one of these licences pertain to the CCZ, an area of about 6m square kilometres east-south-east of Hawaii.
invitingly：1.encouraging you to feel welcome or attracted
e.g：The room looked cosy and inviting.
an inviting smile
2.attractive in a way that causes unpleasant results:
e.g：Companies saddled with high debt have become inviting targets for cash-rich competitors.
Exclusive:1.limited to only one person or group of people:
e.g:This room is for the exclusive use of guests.
an exclusive interview
The two channels are fighting for exclusive rights to cover the championship.
2. expensive and only for people who are rich or of a high social class:
e.g:an exclusive private club
an exclusive part of town
3.not including
e.g:Some people think that uncontrolled economic growth and environmental stability are mutually exclusive(not possible at the same time)
Is the total exclusive of service charges?
purview:the limit of someone's responsibility, interest, or activity
e.g:This case falls outside the purview of this particular court.
Some of the bank's lending operations come under/within the purview of the deputy manager, and some are handled directly by the manager.
地狱的大厅
尽管它们在海面下几公里处的位置似乎使得我们很难获取这些矿石块，但实际上，轻易就可以找到它们，因为它们就赤裸裸的躺在海床上，吸引着你把它们带走。其中大部分矿石分布于沿海国家200海里专属经济区之外的海底区域，比如CCZ。因此，它们属于国际海底管理局(ISA)的管辖范围，国际海底管理局特意为这种资源颁发了17个勘探许可证。这些许可证中除了一个以外，剩下的都属于位于夏威夷东南偏东，面积约600万平方公里的CCZ。
The licensees include Belgium, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, Singapore and South Korea, as well as several small Pacific island states. America, which is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that established the ISA, is not involved directly, but at least one American firm, Lockheed Martin, has an interest in the matter through a British subsidiary, UK Seabed Resources. And people are getting busy. Surveying expeditions have already visited the concessions. On land, the required mining machines are being built and tested. What worries biologists is that if all this busyness does lead to mining, it will wreck habitats before they can be properly catalogued, let alone understood.
Be a party to:to be involved in something, especially something bad
Subsidiary:1.used to refer to something less important than something else with which it is connected
a subsidiary role/factor
2.a company that is owned by a larger company
concessions:something that is allowed or given up, often in order to end a disagreement, or the act of allowing or giving this
wreck:to destroy or badly damage something:
The explosion shattered nearby windows and wrecked two cars.
Our greenhouse was wrecked in last night's storm.
Catalogue:to make a written record of things in the form of a list in a particular order:
They will be hiring an archivist to continue the work of cataloguing the family's possessions.
包括比利时，英国，中国，法国，德国，印度，日本，俄罗斯，新加坡，韩国在内的，以及一些太平洋岛国都获得了许可证。而美国，不是依据联合国海洋公约法建立的ISA的缔约国之一，因此并没有直接参与。但是至少一家美国名叫Lockheed Martin的公司通过其在英国的分公司——英国海床资源，也分到了一杯羹。人们也开始忙碌起来，调查勘探工作也获取了特许。一些必备的勘探仪器正在陆地上加紧生产和测试。而生物学家们所担心的是,这些栖息地在没有被发现记载之前就被毁掉了，更别提去探索了解了。
The first task, therefore, is establish what exactly lives down there. At first glance, the CCZ’s abyssal plain does not look of much interest. It is a vast expanse of mud, albeit littered with nodules. But, though life here may not be abundant, it is diverse. Craig Smith, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who studies the ocean’s abyssal plain, says that the CCZ contains a greater variety of species than the deep seas off the coasts of California and Hawaii.
establish：to discover or get proof of something
Abyssal:found in the deepest parts of the ocean or on the bottom of deep oceans:
abyssal marine life
expanse:a large, open area of land, water, or sky
albeit:although
Be littered with:A place, document, or other object that is littered with something has or contains a lot of that thing
e.g:The newspaper has a reputation for being littered with spelling mistakes.
因此，首要任务是知道这里到底存在哪些生物生活在这。或许起初CCZ的深海平原看上去不怎么样，看不到获利的空间。它到处都是泥泞，尽管矿石随处可见。但是，尽管这里的生物数量不算多，但是物种十分丰富。夏威夷，马诺阿（ Hawaii, Manoa ）的一所大学的研究深海平原的海洋学家 Craig Smith称CCZ的物种丰富度完全超过了加利福尼亚和夏威夷海域的物种丰富度。
Some of the CCZ’s creatures stretch the imagination. There is the bizarre, gelatinous, yellow “gummy squirrel” (pictured), a 50cm-long sea cucumber with a tall, wide tail that may operate like a sail. There are galloping sea urchins that can scurry across the sea floor on long spines, at speeds of several centimetres a second. There are giant red shrimps, measuring up to 40cm long. And there are “Dumbo” octopuses, which have earlike fins above their eyes, giving them an eerie resemblance to a well-known cartoon elephant.
一些CCZ的生物可以极大激发你的想象空间。这里有一种奇怪的、凝胶状的黄色“粘性松鼠”(见图)，是一种50厘米长的海参，长着一条又高又宽的尾巴，可以像船帆一样活动。有一种奔腾的海胆，它们能以每秒几厘米的速度，用长刺在海床上疾跑。有巨大的红色虾，长达40厘米。还有“小飞象”章鱼，它们的眼睛上方有耳状的鳍，与一只著名的卡通大象惊人地相似。
Every expedition brings up species that are new to science, many of them belonging to biological families that are also novel. At a conference in Monterey, California, in September, Dr Smith presented results of a biodiversity survey carried out in the British concession, which sits at the eastern end of the CCZ. Of 154 species of bristle worms the surveyors found, 70% were previously unknown. Dr Smith says the concession may be part of a biodiversity hotspot, one which would not be represented in the nine protected areas of environmental interest that have been set aside in the CCZ. He therefore argues for the establishment of a tenth such area, on the margins of the concession.
每一次的探索都能带来科学史上从未发现过的新物种，其中不乏一些属于一个新的种群的物种。。在加利福尼亚，蒙特利九月份就行的一次会议中，史密斯博士展示了一项在英国位于CCZ东部尽头的租借地进行的有关生物多样性的研究的成果。在研究员发现的154种毛毛虫中，其中有70%是前所未知的。他还声称这个区域很可能会成为研究生物多样性的还尚未并入CCZ中已存在的其他九个与环境保护区的新的热门地。因此，他主张在租界边缘建立第十个这样的地区。
A whale of a tale
The ocean’s largest inhabitants may also be visitors to the CCZ. This summer Leigh Marsh of Britain’s National Oceanography Centre, in Southampton, described more than 3,000 large depressions in the mud there. These formed a series of curved tracks. Similar tracks elsewhere have been linked to whales scraping themselves against the seafloor. Dr Marsh and her colleagues suggest that deep-diving whales may be foraging on the CCZ seafloor, using it as a giant loofah to scrape parasites from their skins or even ingesting the nodules as ballast. If true, this would significantly extend the depth to which whales are known to dive.
Depression:part of a surface that is slightly lower than the rest
forage:1.to go from place to place searching for things that you can eat or use
E.g:The children had been living on the streets, foraging for scraps(small pieces of food that have not been eaten and are usually thrown away)
The pigs foraged in the woods for acorns.
2.food grown for horses and farm animals:
The chef offers special dishes of wild and foraged foods, including wood pigeon and snails.
Scrape:to remove an unwanted covering or a top layer from something, especially using a sharp edge or something rough:
parasites:1.an animal or plant that lives on or in another animal or plant of a different type and feeds from it:
e.g:The older drugs didn't deal effectively with the malaria parasite.
2.[disapproving ]a person who is lazy and lives by other people working, giving them money, etc.ingest:eat or drink sth.
最大的海洋生物也同样是CCZ的访客，今年夏天，位于南安普敦的英国国家海洋学中心的李·马什(Leigh Marsh)描述了3000多处大洼地。形成了一系列弯曲的轨迹。其他地方类似的痕迹被认为是鲸鱼刮擦海底产生的痕迹。马什博士和他的同事认为深海鲸鱼也许潜到海底，把这片矿区当成一个巨大的搓澡巾来驱赶身上的寄生虫，或者吞食一些矿石来充当压载物。如果这是真的，那么有关于鲸鱼可潜水深的研究就能实现进一步的突破。
The only direct evidence of whales in the CCZ, though, comes in fossil form. In Monterey, Dr Amon set the audience buzzing when she presented preliminary data suggesting that the region contains large deposits of fossil whale bones. Such fossils were first noted by the Challenger expedition, a world-spanning investigation of the deep ocean conducted in the 1870s by a British naval research vessel. Dr Amon’s find back in 2013 prompted her and her colleagues to go through tens of thousands of images gathered by various exploration submarines. These recorded 548 cetacean fossils from a range of species. Among the oldest was Choneziphius, an extinct animal that lived more than 10m years ago.
preliminary：coming before a more important action or event, especially introducing or preparing for it。
E.g:Preliminary results show that the vaccine is effective, but this has to be confirmed by further medical trials.
Vessel:a large boat or a ship
cetacean：any of various types of mammal,
然而，能证明鲸鱼曾经出现在CCZ的唯一直接证据，是化石。当爱蒙博士在 Monterey展示了有关这个区域存有大量的鲸鱼骨头化石的初始数据的时候，满座哗然。19世纪70年代，这些化石最早发现于Challenger探险中，那是19世纪70年代英国海军探险船发起的一次全球性的深海探索。而爱蒙博士在2013年的发现促使她和同事浏览了数万张由各种潜水艇探测仪收集的照片。照片中记载了来自不同物种的548个海洋哺乳动物化石。其中最古老的是一种生活在100万年前的，如今已经灭绝的物种，夏恩喙鲸属。
Although this work was a study of photographs, rather than of the remains directly, which could cast doubt over some of the identifications, the metallic-oxide coating of many of the bones gives a sense of how old they are. Because of the density of fossils, Dr Amon says the CCZ may be a previously undiscovered, and rare, submarine fossil bed.
尽管这项工作只是对照片进行了研究，而不是对遗迹直接进行调查，可能会造成一些对于物种识别的怀疑。骨头覆盖的金属氧化物就能告诉我们他们存在的年月。通过海底化石的密度，爱蒙博士断言这极有可能是一片史无前例的，罕见的海底化石区。
Why whale fossils would accumulate in this particular spot is unknown. Possibly, those elsewhere are simply buried. The CCZ sits beneath the ocean’s clearest waters, so its sediments accumulate extremely slowly. But it may be that some as-yet-unknown physical process is keeping the fossils and the (equally old) nodules at the surface of the silt. Indeed, why the nodules are exposed is one of the great mysteries of the region. Regardless, Dr Smith, Dr Amon and others hope the bones’ presence will be taken into account as the ISA drafts the rules and regulations for exploitation of the CCZ.
为什么鲸鱼化石会聚集于此仍是一个未解之谜。也许，其他地方的化石只是被掩埋了。而CCZ位于海底最清澈的水域，沉积物积累的很慢。但可能是一些未知的物理过程在淤泥表面保留了化石和(同样古老的)矿石块。实际上，矿石块为什么会露出来也是这个地区最大的谜团之一。无论如何，史密斯博士，爱蒙博士和其他人都希望当ISA 起草关于探索CCZ的法律规章的时候能把这些化石考虑在内。
Whale fossils, sea cucumbers and shrimps are just the stuff that is visible to the naked eye. Adrian Glover, one of Dr Amon’s colleagues at the Natural History Museum, and his collaborators spent weeks peering down microscopes, inspecting every nook and cranny of the surfaces of some of the nodules themselves. They discovered a miniature ecosystem composed of things that look, at first sight, like flecks of colour—but are, in fact, tiny corals, sponges, fan-like worms and bryozoans, all just tall. In total, the team logged 77 species of such creatures, probably an underestimate.
collaborator:a person who works together with others for a special purpose
nook：a small space that is hidden or partly sheltered
Cranny:a small, narrow opening in something solid:
miniature：used to describe something that is a very small copy of an object
fleck：a small mark or spot:
鲸鱼化石，海参，小虾只是我们肉眼可见的海洋成员。爱蒙博士的一位在自然历史博物馆工作的同事， Adrian Glover，和他的伙伴花费了数周来研究微生物，勘察了一些矿石的所有边边角角。他们发现了一个微型的生态系统，从表面上看，这个生态系统似乎由一些布满了小色点的物质构成，实际上，那些小色点是微型珊瑚，海绵（一种海洋生物），扇形虫和苔藓动物，他们都仅仅只有几毫米大。这个研究小组总共记载了77种类似的生物，而且这个数据很有可能被远远低估了。
Out of sight. Out of mind?
Inevitably, much of this life will be damaged by nodule mining. The impacts are likely be long-lasting. Deep-sea mining technology is still in development, but the general idea is that submersible craft equipped with giant vacuum cleaners will suck nodules from the seafloor. Those nodules will be carried up several kilometres of pipes back to the operations’ mother ships, to be washed and sent on their way.
这种生活将不可避免的被矿石的开采所打断，而且这种影响将会是持久的。深海开采技术仍在发展当中，但是大致的理念是用装有真空吸尘器的海底探测仪从海底把矿石吸起来。这些矿石会通过几千米长的管子带到主探测船上，在运输过程中这些矿石都会被洗干净。
The size and power of the submersibles means that they will leave large tracks in their wake. These are likely to persist for a long time. Evidence for this comes from various decades-old disturbance experiments. In 2015 an exploratory expedition by IFREMER, a French government agency responsible for oceanography, noted that even mobile animals like sea urchins were 70% less abundant within 37-year-old experimental tracks than outside them.
而潜水艇的巨大规模和数量意味着他们会在运行过程中留下很大的痕迹。而且这些痕迹在很长一段时间里都无法被消除。通过一些几十年运行的的干扰仪器就能说明这点。2015年，法国负责海洋学的政府机构IFREMER进行了一次探索性的考察，发现即使是海胆这样的活动动物，在37年前的实验轨迹中，其出现的数量也比在实验轨迹外少70%。
The largest disturbance experiment so far was carried out in 1989 in the Peru Basin, a nodule field to the south of the Galapagos Islands. An eight-metre-wide metal frame fitted with ploughs and harrows was dragged back and forth repeatedly across the seabed, scouring it and wafting a plume of sediment into the water. In 2015 a research vessel returned to the site. Down went the robots, samplers and submarines with their scanners and cameras. The big question was, 26 years after the event, would the sea floor have recovered? The answer was a resounding “no”. The robots brought back images of plough tracks that looked fresh, and of wildlife that had not recovered from the decades-old intrusion
scour： remove dirt from something by rubbing it hard with something rough
waft：to (cause to) move gently through the air
plume：a decoration that looks like several large feathers tied together, worn by soldiers on their hats or attached to horses' heads
resounding：1.very complete; great 2.loud
intrusion：an occasion when someone goes into a place or situation where they are not wanted or expected to be
e.g：They complained about excessive government intrusion (= unwanted involvement) into their legitimate activities.
目前为止，最大的干扰试验是1989年在 Galapagos岛南部的一片矿区—Peru Basin进行的那次实验。一个八米长的装有犁和耙的金属架来回的在这片海床上移动，来回的摩擦，导致这片海域到处漂浮着海底的沉积物。2015年时，当实验船重新回到那个地方，带着机器，样本和潜水艇，以及扫描仪和摄像头。最大的问题在于，26年已经过去了，这片海域是否恢复原样了呢？我们对此给出的答案是：不，没有。机器带回来的图像显示，那些犁过的痕迹还是像刚形成一样，海底生物们也尚且还没有从几十年前的“外来入侵”中恢复过来。
Another concern, in the wake of the experiment, is sediment. This will be both stirred up during collection, as the robots crawl across the sea floor and hoover it, and washed off the nodules at the surface when they are cleaned. Ideally, a second pipe would deliver those washings directly back to the seabed, in order to keep disruption in the water column to a minimum. In practice, dumping silt overboard will be much easier. Decades of failure to police overfishing demonstrate how hard it is to regulate activity on the high seas.
Wake:the waves that a moving ship or object leaves behind
the high seas：the seas that are not controlled by any country
police：to control or guard a public event or area by using members of the police or a similar force:
e.g：The march will be heavily policed by an anti-riot unit.
另外一个实验所造成的令人担忧的问题是那些泥沙，杂质。在收集过程中，机器人会经过海底，清扫海底所造成的泥沙，以及当洗刷矿石表面时刷下来的一些碎屑。理论上，可以用第二个管子把这些洗刷下来的杂物重新送回海底，把对于水柱的破坏降到最低。实际上把这些碎屑从船上倒下来会更容易一些。几十年来，监管过度捕捞的失败成果也告诉我们公海管理有多棘手。
If silt were dumped in this way it could be disastrous. A steady stream of the stuff raining down from the surface would affect everything along the way, especially filter-feeding animals such as sponges and krill, which make their livings by extracting small particles of food floating in the water. The effect both in the water column and on the sea floor might not be so great in other parts of the oceans, say biologists, but life in the crystalline CCZ is wholly unadapted to murky waters.
disastrous：extremely bad or unsuccessful
crystalline:resembling crystal:
stuff：a substance, especially when you do not know or say exactly what it is
以这种方式倾倒废物几乎是不能的，从海面源源不断的倾倒，在这过程中会影响到很多东西。尤其是以一些碎屑为食的生物，比如海绵和磷虾。它们都是以从水体中摄取微小的漂浮物为食。生物学家们称在水体中及海底产生的影响相对于海洋的其他方面可能不大,但对于生活在水晶般澄清的CCZ地区的生物来说可能很难适应那种浑浊的水域
All of this needs to be balanced against the impacts of mining the equivalent amounts of minerals on land, however. The CCZ covers about 2% of the deep ocean. A 20-year operation within it would affect of the order of 10,000 square kilometres—about a six-hundredth of its area—according to Mr Van Nijen. And, unlike mining developments in virgin areas of dry land, which tend to bring other forms of development in their wake by creating transport links that encourage human settlement, no one is going to follow the nodule-hoovers and actually live on the abyssal plain.
virgin：specifically : not altered by human activity
获取同等矿石的情况下，我们应当权衡一下在海底可能会产生的影响和在陆地上会产生的影响，CCZ占据了2%的深海区域。据 Van Nijen称在这个地方进行的一个长达20年的开采可能会影响其周边1000平方千米也就是大约是其自身占地的600倍的区域。而且，不同于在陆地开采，陆地开采可以通过在开采过程中建立交通运输线来让人们安居下来，没有人会和采矿器一起，住在海底。
In the end, the only way to erasure how mining would change the bottom of the ocean may be to conduct small-scale pilot operations. The first will take place next April, when GSR will lower Patania II, an enormous green tractor, to the bed of the CCZ. Patania II is a prototype nodule collector. It will clear areas roughly 300 by 100 metres, leaving them nodule-free, so that future expeditions can return and study recolonisation rates. An array of sensors suspended in the nearby water will monitor the resultant silt plume, which the company’s models suggest could travel up to 5km—not the hundreds of kilometres that some have suggested.
erasure:an act or instance of erasing
recolonisation：the colonization of a previously colonized region or habitat
suspend：If small pieces of solid material are suspended in a gas or a liquid, they hang or float in the gas or liquid:
plume：material (such as a feather, cluster of feathers, or a tuft of hair) worn as an ornament
最终呢，尽量减小开采对于海底影响的唯一解决方案就是采取小规模的开采活动。明年四月预计会进行第一次开采，GSR会把一个巨大的绿色拖拉机 Patania II投放到CCZ海底，100米内它大概能采集300块矿石，最终将矿石采尽。以便于未来探险队重回此地来研究其恢复速率。悬浮在附近水域的一系列传感器将监测由此产生的淤泥羽流，该公司的模型显示，淤泥羽流可能高达5公里，而不是一些人所说的的数百公里。
To scrutinise this trial independently, JPI Oceans, an intergovernmental research body, has paid for the Sonne, a German research vessel, to sail alongside GSR’s. As Mr Van Nijen puts it, “We need to validate our equipment, but from an environmental perspective, the world’s first mining test at depth is a unique opportunity for scientists to study the impacts. If we don’t do this in a transparent manner, it will go nowhere.” That sounds like a promising start. But however careful the miners are, life for the inhabitants of the CCZ is about to get a lot less peaceful than it has been for millions of years.
Scrutinise:to examine something very carefully in order to discover information:
Validate:to make something officially acceptable or approved:
He scrutinized the men's faces carefully/closely, trying to work out who was lying.
为了独立审查这次试验，政府研究机构JPI海洋公司出资购买了一艘德国研究船Sonne号，与GSR号一起航行。正如Van Nijen先生所说，“我们需要验证我们的设备，但是从环境的角度来看，世界上第一次深度采矿试验是科学家研究影响的独特机会。”如果我们不以透明的方式来做这件事，它将一事无成。这听起来是个有希望的开始。但是，无论矿工们多么小心，CCZ的居民的数百万年来的平静生活都将不复存在