人類只“看清”了0.001%的海底

You've probably heard this before： We understand more about outer space than we do about the deepest depths of Earth's oceans. But knowing this and actually thinking about the numbers are another thing entirely. Roughly 70 percentofthe planetiscovered in ocean，and there'sfarmore life in it than the cumulative organisms on land. Scientists estimate there are somewhere between 700，0o0—1 million species living in the approximately 360 million square kilometers of water.After centuries of exploration， we've only catalogued about a third ofthose creatures.

你可能聽過這樣一句話：我們對外太空的了解比對地球海洋深處的了解還要多。但知道這個事實和真正理解這些數(shù)字完全是兩碼事。地球約有 70% 的面積被海洋覆蓋，海洋中的生物遠比陸地上所有的生物加起來還要多。科學家估計，在大約3.6億平方千米的海域中，生活著70萬到100萬個物種。經(jīng)過幾個世紀的探索，我們只對其中大約三分之一的生物進行了編目。

That's not including microorganisms， by the way. If you want to add those to your tally， you'll need to tack on a few more million to the total number of species. Even less is known about the seafloor itself. According to International Hydrographic Organization （lHO）， just about 25% percent of Earth's ocean floors have been mapped using high-resolution technology.

順便說一下，這還不包括微生物。如果加上微生物的數(shù)量，海洋生物物種還得再增加幾百萬。我們對海底的了解甚至更少。據(jù)國際海道測量組織的說法，地球海洋的海底只有約 25% 的面積使用高分辨率技術(shù)進行了測繪。

But when it comes to seeing what's down there-be it remotely or in piloted submersibles—the total is downright negligible. Ocean Discovery League is a non-profit organization. Itsresearchers charted outabout 44，0oo records from submersible expeditions undertaken by 14 countries across both 120 Exclusive Economic Zones （EEZs） and international waters. It's from those statisticsthattheywereableto calculate that humans still have 99.999 percent of the seafloor left to visuallyobserve.

但當談及對海底的觀測一—無論是遠程探測還是載人深潛一其觀測范圍簡直微不足道。海洋探索聯(lián)盟是一家非營利組織，其研究人員整合了來自14個國家在120個專屬經(jīng)濟區(qū)及公海開展的潛水器勘探數(shù)據(jù)（約4.4萬項觀測記錄）。基于這些數(shù)據(jù)，他們計算出還有 99.999% 的海底區(qū)域未被人類實地觀測到。

WordBank

catalogue/'kat?lpg/ v. 列入目錄；編入目錄 tackon附加，添加 The poems were tacked on at the end of the book. expedition/，eksp?'difn/n.探險；考察 calculate/'kelkjulert/ v. 計算；核算 fundamental/，fnda'mentl/adj.十分重大的；根本的

Whathas been documented also illustrates a troublesome bias in geographic location.Most expeditions have taken place inside EEZs within 200 nautical miles of the US， Japan， and New Zealand. Combine those countries with France and Germany， and together they account for about 97 percent of all dives.

現(xiàn)有勘探記錄還突顯出令人擔憂的地理位置偏倚問題。絕大多數(shù)海底勘探集中于美國、日本及新西蘭200海里內(nèi)的專屬經(jīng)濟區(qū)。若計入法國和德國，五國深潛航次占全球總量的約 97% 0

“This small and biased sample is problematic when attempting to characterize，understand，andmanagea global ocean，\"researchers wrote. Accordingto theteam，theseestimates starkly lay out the need for a \"fundamental change in how we explore and study the global deep ocean\".

研究人員警示稱：“這一規(guī)模小且偏頗的數(shù)據(jù)樣本，在試圖表征、理解及管理全球海洋時是存在問題的。”研究團隊指出，這些數(shù)據(jù)充分揭示出“我們探索研究全球深海的方式亟須根本性變革”。