乌龟的烦恼

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Science and technology

科技板块

Conservation

保护

How to prepare poached eggs

对付偷蛋人

A tracking device may help stop the robbery of turtles' nests

一种追踪装置或许可以阻止海龟巢穴被盗

Turtles have a problem. They are delicious. And so are their eggs. That has led to heavy hunting in the past. These days, though, the seven species of marine turtle are protected in most countries. If turtle soup is legally on the menu its source will be a freshwater species such as the North American snapping turtle. But that does not stop the eggs of marine turtles being poached. Which they are, frequently.

乌龟们有一个烦恼：自己太美味，下的蛋也美味。这使得它们在过去遭受了大肆捕杀。目前，虽然有七种海龟已在大多国家的保护之下，但只要菜单上的龟汤合法，那么淡水龟种，比如北美的啮龟，就将成为原料来源。而这并未阻止海龟蛋继续被盗，被盗事件依旧频发。

Such poaching is often ignored by local bobbies. But even if the authorities do wish to clamp down on it, arresting the small-fry who dig the eggs up on beaches where turtles nest will not deal with the problem. That requires finding the trade's organisers. And this can be hard.

这种偷猎行为常被当地警察忽视，但是，即使当局真的想要强行压制，即便抓捕了那些在海龟筑巢的海滩上挖蛋的“小人物”也于事无补，他们需要找出幕后黑手(交易组织者)，但这十分困难。

To assist the process Kim WilliamsGuillén of Paso Pacifico, an American conservation charity, and Helen Pheasey of the University of Kent, in Britain, have come up with a nifty gadget. It is a globalpositioning-system transmitter enclosed in a plastic shell made by 3D printing. The result looks like a turtle's egg and weighs about the same. Dug up and carried away by poachers, it can lead the police to those poachers' bases of operation.

为了协助这一行动的进行，美国保护慈善组织帕索·太平洋地区的金·威廉斯吉伦和英国肯特大学的海伦·菲西发明了一个精巧的装置，即一种安装在由3D打印制作的塑胶蛋壳内的全球定位系统发射机，外形、重量均与海龟蛋无差。一旦这种装置被偷蛋者挖出来并带走，警察便可追踪至偷蛋者的大本营。

As they report this week in Current Biology, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey have now tested their invention in Costa Rica, a place where turtle-egg poaching is rife. They set the printer to mimic the eggs of two species, the green and the olive ridley, which frequent that country's coast-lines, and placed a decoy egg into each of 101 turtle nests on four beaches where poaching is a problem. The decoys were rigged to remain dormant until their shells were exposed to the air. At that moment—presumed to signal the arrival of poachers—the "egg" in question starts broadcasting its location once an hour.

正如本周他们在《当代生物学》上报道的那样，金·威廉斯吉伦博士和菲西博士已经在哥斯达黎加（海龟蛋被盗盛行之地）对该装置进行了测试。他们用打印机模拟了两种海龟蛋——绿蠵龟和橄榄绿蠵龟，这两种海龟经常出没于该国的海岸线上。他们在存在偷猎问题的四个海滩上的101个海龟巢穴中各放了一枚假蛋。诱饵蛋被设置成休眠模式，直到蛋壳暴露于空气之中将其触发。在那一刻——被认为是偷猎者到来的信号——这只“蛋”便开始每小时播报一次自己的位置。

In all, 25 of the decoys were poached. They told different stories. Some travelled just a few kilometres, with one ending up at a bar 2km away from the nest it was taken from, where its signal abruptly ended. Others went quite a distance. One, for example, was carried 137km inland, to a supermarket loading bay, before transmitting its final signal from a residential property nearby.

被偷的“假蛋”共25枚，它们分别诉说了不同的故事。有的仅被带离几公里之外，还有一枚在距离被偷巢穴2公里的一家酒吧内突然销声匿迹。其它的则被带到了较远的地区，比如其中一枚“假蛋”被带到了137公里外的内陆，到了一家超市的装货间，最后在超市附近的一个小区里发出了最后的信号。

The most curious tale, though, was told by a decoy that ended up in Cariari, a town 43km from the beach where it had been deployed. To their surprise, the researchers were sent photographs of this particular device by members of a local turtle-monitoring project. This group had been contacted by the egg's purchaser, who was happy to volunteer where he had bought it—indicating either that he did not understand that the trade was illegal, or that he didn't care.

其中最离奇的一段故事来自一枚最后被带到了卡里阿里(Cariari)的“假蛋”，卡里阿里是一处距离被盗巢穴43公里的小镇。令研究人员惊讶的是，他们从当地的海龟监测项目成员那里收到了该特殊装置的照片。该海龟蛋买家已经联系了小组，他很乐意告诉大家自己在哪里买的鸡蛋，这表明他不知道这种交易是非法的，或者说他不在乎。

To make sure that they, themselves, were not harming what they were intending to protect, the researchers monitored all of the decoy-laden nests which had survived the attentions of poachers and compared these nests' outputs of hatchlings with those of 44 other surviving nests that had no decoy in them. Both sorts of nest had the same hatching rates, suggesting that adding a decoy did not affect the development of the eggs it was hidden among.

为了确保他们没有伤及他们自己想要保护的对象，研究人员检测了所有未引起偷蛋者注意的装有“假蛋”的巢穴，并将这些巢穴内孵化的小乌龟和其它44个里面没有“假蛋”的未遭偷盗的巢穴内孵出的小乌龟进行了对比，结果显示这两种巢穴内的孵化率是一样的。这说明把“假蛋”混着放在真蛋里并未影响真蛋的发育。

Given the success of their project, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey propose that the idea should be used more widely for turtles. They also suggest that similar decoys might help protect the eggs of other endangered reptiles—and birds—that are collected and traded illegally.

鉴于项目的成功，金·威廉斯吉伦博士和菲西博士提议将该想法广泛应用于帮助乌龟。同时他们建议，类似“假蛋”或可用于帮助避免其他面临威胁的爬行动物——及鸟类——的蛋被收集和非法交易。

来源：经济学人

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