Behold the Lionfish, as Transfixing as It Is Destructive
杀死一条狮子鱼
The silence underwater is overwhelming. Time passes quickly. Having spotted my target, I focus on it intensely, knowing that if I miss, and the animal gets away, it may learn from the encounter and be harder to hunt in the future.
水下的寂静令人窒息。时间流逝得很快。发现目标后，我紧盯着它，因为我知道，如果射偏让它逃走，它可能会从这次遭遇中吸取教训，以后就更难抓到了。
As I approach, armed with my spear, I watch as the fish spreads its wide pectoral fins, displaying its venomous spines. (Slow and easy to spot, it relies on this intimidating display to deter would-be predators.) I take aim, pull back on my spear’s spring-loaded handle and let the weapon fly.
当我拿着鱼叉靠近，我看到那鱼张开了宽阔的胸鳍，露出了毒刺。（它行动缓慢，很容易被发现，就依靠这样的威吓来吓退潜在的捕食者。）我瞄准了它，扣动弹簧扳机，鱼叉飞了出去。
被狮子鱼长长的毒刺蜇中后会感到极其疼痛，但很少会致命。
I learned to free-dive and hunt underwater as a child, but spearfishing is no longer thrilling to me. As an adult I took up interests in marine biology and underwater photography, ultimately trading the spear gun of my childhood for my first professional underwater camera. Not long afterward, I completed a master’s degree in marine biology. For the last 10 years I’ve lived on the small Caribbean island of Bonaire, where I work as a marine conservationist photographer.
我从小就学会了自由潜水和水下捕猎，但用鱼叉捕鱼对我而言已经不再刺激了。成年后，我对海洋生物学和水下摄影产生了兴趣，最后用我童年的鱼叉换来了第一台专业水下相机。那之后不久，我获得了海洋生物学硕士学位。过去十年，作为一名海洋保护摄影师，我一直生活在博奈尔这座加勒比海小岛上。
My overarching goal is to document the efforts of the local community — scientists, professional divers and volunteers — to preserve the reefs of Bonaire. And here, a significant part of the collective preservation effort is focused on a particular target: the lionfish (Pterois miles and Pterois volitans).
我的首要目标是记录当地社区——包括科学家、专业潜水员和志愿者——为保护博奈尔岛上的珊瑚礁所做的努力。在这里，很大一部分综合保护工作都集中在一种特定鱼类之上：那就是狮子鱼（即斑鳍蓑鲉和翱翔蓑鲉）。
Lionfish are native to the Pacific and Indian oceans. But in the past few decades, the animal has established itself in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, where its invasive presence poses a serious threat to tropical Atlantic reefs and their associated habitats.
狮子鱼原分布于太平洋和印度洋。但在过去几十年间，它们在墨西哥湾和加勒比海安顿了下来，这种入侵对这里的热带大西洋珊瑚礁及其栖息地都构成了严重威胁。
The effects are staggering. One study by scientists from Oregon State University found that, in only five weeks, a single lionfish reduced the juvenile fish in its feeding zone by 80 percent. And their reproductive output is remarkably high: Females can release around 25,000 eggs every few days. In some places, including the Bahamas, the density of lionfish may well be causing the most significant change to biodiversity of reef habitats since the dawn of industrialized fishing.
其影响是令人震惊的。俄勒冈州立大学的科学家进行的一项研究发现，仅在五周内，一条狮子鱼就使其摄食区内的幼鱼数量减少了80%。而且它们的繁殖能力非常强大：雌鱼每隔几天就能产卵约2.5万枚。在包括巴哈马群岛在内的一些地方，狮子鱼的大量繁殖很可能造成了自工业化以来珊瑚礁栖息地生物多样性最为剧烈的变化。
Communities throughout the Caribbean have employed a number of strategies to stem the growth of lionfish populations. Bonaire relies on volunteer lionfish hunters; on partnerships with Stichting Nationale Parken Bonaire, or STINAPA, a nonprofit foundation that manages Bonaire’s nature parks; and on help from local dive shops.
整个加勒比地区的社群都在采取措施，抑制狮子鱼数量的增长。博奈尔岛靠的是捕捉狮子鱼的志愿者、与管理博奈尔自然公园的非营利基金会博奈尔国家公园基金会（简称STINAPA）合作、以及当地潜水商店的帮助。
Divers offer a precise form of population management, since underwater hunting results in little collateral damage. But divers are limited by the depth to which they can comfortably descend — often around 60 feet. In places where lionfish are found at greater depths, traps can also be employed.
潜水员捕捉是一种精准控制狮子鱼数量的办法，因为水下捕捉几乎不会造成附带损害。但潜水员能舒适下潜的深度有限，通常在18米左右。当狮子鱼在更深的地方活动时 ，可以使用陷阱对其捕获。
Because spearfishing is prohibited on Bonaire, and to help prevent injury, special tools were developed and distributed to help divers with their hunts. The ELF tools — “ELF” stands for “eradicate lionfish” — also help prevent damage that traditional spear guns and nets inflict on reefs.
由于博奈尔岛禁止用鱼叉捕鱼，再加上为了防止受伤，有人研发并推广了特殊工具来帮助潜水员捕鱼。这种ELF工具——意思是“根除狮子鱼”——也有助于避免传统鱼叉枪和渔网对珊瑚礁造成的破坏。
While catching a lionfish is relatively easy, it can be difficult — and dangerous — to remove the fish from the spear tip of an ELF and tow the animal without being injured by its venomous spines. Thus, lionfish hunters also began using a device called a “zookeeper” — essentially a piece of PVC pipe that’s closed at one end and has a modified plastic funnel at the other end. Once the lionfish is speared on the ELF, the fish (and spear tip) are inserted into the zookeeper; when the spear is withdrawn, the fish is trapped inside the pipe by the funnel.
虽然捕捉狮子鱼相对容易，但要把鱼从ELF工具的尖头上取下来拿走，同时还要避免被其毒刺伤害，可能比较困难且危险。因此，狮子鱼猎手也开始使用一种叫做“动物园管理员”的设备，实际上它就是一截PVC管子，一头封闭，另一头是一个改装的塑料漏斗。只要用ELF叉住了狮子鱼，就把鱼（和鱼叉尖）通过漏斗都塞进“动物园管理员”里面；抽出鱼叉后，鱼就被困在管子里了。
When I first arrived on Bonaire, I was introduced to the conservation project aimed at eradicating the lionfish. Because of my experience as a spear fisher, I was immediately asked to get involved. I agreed to participate — though my true interest was in documenting the community’s efforts.
我刚来博奈尔岛的时候，就被介绍给了一个旨在根除狮子鱼的保护项目。因为我有捕鱼经验，对方马上邀请我参与。虽然我真正的兴趣所在是记录这个社区的努力，但还是应承了下来。
Since then, I’ve become fascinated by the destructive capabilities of the transfixing creature.
自那以后，这种尖刺动物的破坏力愈发令我惊叹。
It feels cruel to kill something so hypnotically beautiful — even though I understand, rationally, that the act is ecologically beneficial. The lionfish, after all, isn’t to blame; it likely ended up here, scientists theorize, when aquarium owners dumped unwanted specimens off the coast of Florida, possibly because they were eating their way through the other fish sharing their tanks.
杀死如此美丽的生物感觉很残忍，哪怕我在理智上明白，这么做有益于生态。毕竟，问题不在狮子鱼；科学家推论，它们之所以来到这里，是因为养观赏鱼的人将那些不想要的鱼类丢弃在了佛罗里达海岸，而它们之所以被弃，大约是因为鱼缸里的其他鱼都被它们吃干抹净了。
And yet killing the fish, one by one, is perhaps the best way to slow the havoc they’re wreaking on the Caribbean reefs.
然而，将这些狮子鱼逐一杀死，或许是减缓它们对加勒比珊瑚礁造成破坏的最佳办法。
来源：好英语网
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