The first time I cried underwater was in 2008, the island of Curacao, way down in the southern Caribbean.
我第一次在水底哭是2008年的时候，我在古拉索岛，在遥远的加勒比海南端。
It's beautiful there. I was studying these corals for my PhD,
那边很美。当时我在攻读博士研究珊瑚，
and after days and days of diving on the same reef, I had gotten to know them as individuals.
日复一日潜水到同一块礁上，让我对它们都了如指掌。
I had made friends with coral colonies -- totally a normal thing to do.
我和珊瑚群交朋友--这可一点也不奇怪。
Then, Hurricane Omar smashed them apart and ripped off their skin,
后来奥马尔飓风让它们四分五裂、体无完肤，
leaving little bits of wounded tissue that would have a hard time healing,
留下一丁点受了伤的组织，得花时间辛苦疗养，
and big patches of dead skeleton that would get overgrown by algae.
大片死亡的骨架上会长满水藻。
When I saw this damage for the first time, stretching all the way down the reef,
第一次看到灾情遍及珊瑚礁深处的时候，
I sunk onto the sand in my scuba gear and I cried.
穿着潜水肺装站在沙上的我哭了。
If a coral could die that fast, how could a reef ever survive?
如果珊瑚死的速度这么快，礁怎么能撑得过来？
And why was I making it my job to try to fight for them?
而我又为什么要试图为它们奋战？
I never heard another scientist tell that kind of story until last year.
直到去年我才听到其他科学家说这类的故事。
A scientist in Guam wrote, "I cried right into my mask," seeing the damage on the reefs.
一位在关岛的科学家写信给我：“我在面罩里哭了，”因为我看到了那些珊瑚礁的伤痕。
Then a scientist in Australia wrote, "I showed my students the results of our coral surveys, and we wept."
另一位澳洲科学家写道：“我让学生看我们研究珊瑚的结果，大家都落泪了。”
Crying about corals is having a moment, guys.
各位，为珊瑚哭泣现在正是时候。
And that's because reefs in the Pacific are losing corals faster than we've ever seen before.
那是因为太平洋的礁以前所未有的速度流失珊瑚。
Because of climate change, the water is so hot for so long in the summers, that these animals can't function normally.
因为气候变迁，海水在夏天太热太久，以致于这些动物无法正常运作。
They're spitting out the colored algae that lives in their skin,
它们吐出住在它们身上的有色海藻，
and the clear bleached tissue that's left usually starves to death and then rots away.
而留下的白化组织通常会饿死，然后腐烂。
Then the skeletons are overgrown by algae.
接着骨架上就会长满海藻。
This is happening over an unbelievable scale.
这种情况以不可思议的程度一直在发生。
The Northern Great Barrier Reef lost two-thirds of its corals last year over a distance of hundreds of miles,
北大堡礁去年失去三分之二的珊瑚，总长好几百英里，
then bleached again this year, and the bleaching stretched further south.
今年又再度发生白化，而且蔓延到南部了。
Reefs in the Pacific are in a nosedive right now, and no one knows how bad it's going to get,
太平洋珊瑚礁的情况一落千丈，没人知道之后会多惨，
except ... over in the Caribbean where I work, we've already been through the nosedive.
除了…… 我工作的地方加勒比海，我们已经撑过谷底。
Reefs there have suffered through centuries of intense human abuse.
那里的珊瑚礁百年来饱受人类摧残。
We kind of already know how the story goes. And we might be able to help predict what happens next.
我们大概知道故事会怎么发展下去。我们也许可以协助预测下一步会发生什么事。
Let's consult a graph. Since the invention of scuba,
我们来看个图表。自从潜水肺发明之后，
scientists have measured the amount of coral on the seafloor, and how it's changed through time.
科学家测量海底珊瑚数量，以及日后的变化。
And after centuries of ratcheting human pressure, Caribbean reefs met one of three fates.
经过几个世纪日益加遽的人类压力，加勒比海珊瑚礁面临了三种命运。
Some reefs lost their corals very quickly. Some reefs lost their corals more slowly, but kind of ended up in the same place.
有些礁快速失去珊瑚；有些礁失去珊瑚的速度慢一点，但结局差不多一样。
OK, so far this is not going very well.
到目前为止不太乐观。
But some reefs in the Caribbean -- the ones best protected and the ones a little further from humans
但有些加勒比海珊瑚礁--被保护得最好的那一些，还有离人类比较远的那一些，
they managed to hold onto their corals. Give us a challenge. And, we almost never saw a reef hit zero.
它们顺利保住珊瑚。这带给了我们挑战。而且我们几乎没见过一块珊瑚礁片甲不留。
The second time I cried underwater was on the north shore of Curacao, 2011.
第二次我在水底哭，是2011年在古拉索岛北岸。
It was the calmest day of the year, but it's always pretty sketchy diving there.
那是一年之中最平静的一天，但在那边潜水总是很危险。
My boyfriend and I swam against the waves.
我男友和我游向海浪。
I watched my compass so we could find our way back out, and he watched for sharks,
我确认指南针，之后才能找得到回头路，他在观察看有没有鲨鱼，
and after 20 minutes of swimming that felt like an hour, we finally dropped down to the reef,
游了二十分钟之后，感觉就像游了一小时，我们终于落在珊瑚礁上，
and I was so shocked, and I was so happy that my eyes filled with tears.
我超惊讶，而且超开心，让我热泪盈眶。
There were corals 1,000 years old lined up one after another.
上千年的珊瑚在那里一个挨着一个。

They had survived the entire history of European colonialism in the Caribbean, and for centuries before that.
它们从加勒比海整个欧洲殖民主义的历史中幸存下来，而且在那之前也活了几个世纪。
I never knew what a coral could do when it was given a chance to thrive.
我从来不知道珊瑚有机会成长茁壮时，它能做什么。
The truth is that even as we lose so many corals, even as we go through this massive coral die-off, some reefs will survive.
事实是即使我们失去这么多珊瑚，即使我们经历了大量珊瑚相继死去，有些珊瑚还是会活下来。
Some will be ragged on the edge, some will be beautiful.
有些边缘会不平整，有些会很美。
And by protecting shorelines and giving us food to eat and supporting tourism,
珊瑚透过保护海岸线、供给我们食物和协助观光业，
they will still be worth billions and billions of dollars a year.
未来每年都还是会提供千百亿的价值。
The best time to protect a reef was 50 years ago, but the second-best time is right now.
保护珊瑚礁最好的时机点是在五十年前，第二次则是现在。
Even as we go through bleaching events, more frequent and in more places, some corals will be able to recover.
即使我们经历的白化事件越来越频繁，也出现在更多地方，有些珊瑚还是能复原。
We had a bleaching event in 2010 in the Caribbean that took off big patches of skin on boulder corals like these.
加勒比海在2010年发生过白化事件，造成巨砾珊瑚的表层像这样大面积剥落。
This coral lost half of its skin.
这个珊瑚的表面掉了一半。
But if you look at the side of this coral a few years later, this coral is actually healthy again.
但几年后，如果你看它的侧边，它又变健康了。
It's doing what a healthy coral does.
它会跟健康珊瑚做一样的事。
It's making copies of its polyps, it's fighting back the algae and it's reclaiming its territory.
它会复制珊瑚虫、击退海藻、收复它的领土。
If a few polyps survive, a coral can regrow; it just needs time and protection and a reasonable temperature.
如果有些珊瑚虫活下来，珊瑚可以重生；它要的只是时间、保护和合理的温度。
Some corals can regrow in 10 years -- others take a lot longer.
有些珊瑚可以在十年内复活，有些要很久。
But the more stresses we take off them locally
只要我们在当地减轻它们越多压力，
things like overfishing, sewage pollution, fertilizer pollution, dredging, coastal construction
像是过度捕捞、污水污染、肥料污染、拖捞网、海岸工程等，
the better they can hang on as we stabilize the climate, and the faster they can regrow.
它们就能在我们稳定气候时撑下来，也就能更快重生。
And as we go through the long, tough and necessary process of stabilizing the climate of planet Earth,
我们在采取漫长、艰辛和必要的程序来稳定地球气候的同时，
some new corals will still be born. This is what I study in my research.
部分新珊瑚还会继续诞生。这是我的研究。
We try to understand how corals make babies, and how those babies find their way to the reef,
我们试着了解珊瑚怎么生小孩，还有这些小孩怎么找到珊瑚礁，
and we invent new methods to help them survive those early, fragile life stages.
我们发明了一种方法，协助它们在生命早期脆弱的阶段中存活下来。
One of my favorite coral babies of all time showed up right after Hurricane Omar.
我一直以来最爱的珊瑚宝宝在奥马尔飓风来袭后出现。
It's the same species I was studying before the storm, but you almost never see babies of this species -- it's really rare.
那和我在风暴前研究的是同一种，但一般几乎看不到这一种的宝宝，因为它们真的非常稀有。
This is actually an endangered species.
它们真的是濒危物种。
In this photo, this little baby coral, this little circle of polyps, is a few years old.
在这张照片里，这个小珊瑚宝宝，这一小团珊瑚虫，有几岁大。
Like its cousins that bleach, it's fighting back the algae.
它们像白化的表亲一样击退海藻。
And like its cousins on the north shore, it's aiming to live for 1,000 years.
像它们的在北岸的表亲，打算要活一千年。
What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon.
世界上和海里发生的事，会改变我们时程。
We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted.
短期内我们可能会非常悲观，哀悼我们失去的和我们过去视为理所当然的一切。
But we can still be optimistic on the long term,
但长期来看我们还是能保持乐观，
and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet.
我们还是可以对我们要争取的，以及对政府和地球的期望怀有雄心壮志。
Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years.
珊瑚已经在地球上生存数十亿年。
They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses.
它们在恐龙绝迹的时候活了下来。它们是坏蛋。
An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection.
一个珊瑚能在经历重大创伤后完全复原，只要它有机会并且得到保护。
Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we. Thanks very much.
珊瑚一直都打长久战，现在我们也是。非常感谢。