(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
They're among the most amazing events of the wild world:
Africa's thundering herds of wildebeest. (BBC: "...and nothing will stop them now.")
The incredible migrating monarch butterflies. (National Geographic: "One of the great spectacles of nature.")
The captivating chorus (corvina sound) of the Gulf corvina. Wait, haven't heard of that last one?
"It's a true wildlife spectacle. A fish this loud, this many fish calling."
Brad Erisman is a fisheries ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin. And to hear him tell it, the chatter of the corvina fish belongs right up there with those other great spectacles.
Every spring, he says, the fish migrate hundreds of miles to the northernmost reaches of the Sea of Cortez, the body of water between Baja, California and mainland Mexico. And there, at the Colorado River Delta, "it has this massive synchronous spawning with outgoing tides for two to three days, every other week, for three months."
And during that time, it also makes this noise (corvina sound), produced by flexing muscles around the swim bladder. "And it allows the swim bladder to reverberate. Much like any sort of drum, any sort of gas-filled chamber."
That simultaneous drumming of hundreds of thousands or even millions of fish is extremely loud. "It's louder than if you were a meter away from the stage at a rock concert." In fact, Erisman and his colleague Timothy Rowell have found that corvina chatter rivals the decibel levels produced by whales—loud enough, even, to damage the hearing of dolphins—making it among the loudest underwater animal sounds on the planet.
The aquatic cacophony is written up in the journal Biology Letters.
But the sound is under attack—by our teeth. "Fried, baked, put it in tacos. Pretty much any way you can think of, you can make corvina." Which spells danger for the singing fish. "It's heavily exploited, it's overfished, and we're really concerned about the fishery collapsing."
But by spreading the word about the corvina's signature sound, Erisman hopes to keep the species—and its song—from going silent.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
这些是野生世界最令人惊异的事件：
非洲大批成群的牛羚。（BBC：“……现在没有什么能够阻止它们。”）
令人难以置信的迁徙中的帝王蝶。（国家地理：“自然界最壮观的场面之一”。）
海湾石首鱼迷人的大合唱。（石首鱼的声音）等等，没听过最后那个声音吧？
“这是真正的野生动物奇观。一只鱼的声音可以这么大，这是许多鱼的叫声。”
得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的渔业生态学家布拉德·埃里斯曼说道。按照他的说法，石首鱼的叫声和其他奇观一样。
他说，每年春天，石首鱼都会游数百英里迁徙至科特兹海最北端，那里是位于下加利福尼亚州和墨西哥内陆之间的水域。在那里，也就是科罗拉多河三角洲，“在大约3个月的时间里，大批石首鱼每隔1周在退潮时进行2-3天的集体产卵。”
在这段时间，石首鱼会发出这种噪音（石首鱼的声音），这是通过收缩鱼鳔周围的肌肉所发出的声音。“它让鱼鳔发出回响。非常像鼓声，像充气的腔室。”
成千上万、甚至数百万条鱼同时发出的“鼓声”极为洪亮。“这声音比你站在摇滚演唱会舞台一米开外所听到的声音还要响亮。”实际上，埃里斯曼和同事蒂莫西·罗威尔发现，石首鱼聊天声的分贝级别与鲸鱼不相上下——声音大到甚至可以使海豚的听力受损，这使石首鱼成为地球上声音最大的水下动物之一。
这项研究结果发表在《生物学快报》期刊上。
但是，这种声音正在遭受攻击——而攻击者是我们的牙齿。“炸、烤、放进墨西哥玉米饼里。几乎你能想到的任何方式，都能用来烹饪石首鱼。”这给这种唱歌的鱼带来了危险。“石首鱼资源被过度开发、过度捕捞，我们对这种渔业的崩盘倍感担心。”
但是，通过传播石首鱼标志性的声音，埃里斯曼希望让这个物种及其“歌声”避免走向沉寂的命运。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
重点讲解：
1. in fact 事实上，其实；
例句：Both mushrooms look innocuous but are in fact deadly.
这两种蘑菇看起来似乎都无害，实际上却是致命的。
2. write up 把…整理成文；详细写出（所做的事或所说的话）；
例句：He wrote up his visit in a report of over 600 pages.
他将自己的访问整理成了一份600多页的报告。
3. think of 想出，想到；
例句：It's the only explanation I can think of.
这是我能够想到的唯一理由。
4. keep sb. from doing sth. 阻止（或防止、阻碍）…做；
例句：She had not doubted she was going to see them but this did not keep her from being frightened.
她知道她会看到他们，但这还是让她感到恐惧。
