Climate change and overfishing have made the penguins’ feeding grounds a mirage-which has led to a drop in penguin population. Jason G. Goldman reports.

据杰森·戈尔德曼报道，气候变化和过度捕鱼使企鹅的食物区变为了海市蜃楼，导致企鹅数量不断下降。

撰文/播音：杰森·戈尔德曼（Jason G. Goldman）

翻译：郭鑫鹏

审校：杨枭

Over millions of years, penguins have evolved a keen sense of where to find food. Once they’ve old enough, they set off from the shores on which they hatched for the first time and swim long distances in search of tasty fish like anchovies and sardines. But they don’t search directly for the fish themselves.

数百万年间，企鹅进化出了寻找食物的敏锐感觉。当长到足够大，它们便从破壳而出的海岸启航，遨游很长距离寻找凤尾鱼、沙丁鱼等等的美食。但是它们并不是直接寻找这些鱼类。

For example, when young endangered African penguins head out to sea, they look for areas with low surface temperatures and high chlorophyll. Because those conditions signal the presence of phytoplankton. And lots of phytoplankton means lots of zooplankton, which in turn means lots of their favorite fish. Well, that’s what it used to mean.

举例来说，当濒危非洲企鹅在幼年时期航向大海，它们会寻找表面低温、叶绿素浓度高的水域，这些条件预示着浮游植物的存在。而大量的浮游植物则意味着大量的浮游动物，进而表明存在着大量它们喜爱的鱼类。这便是过去常见的情况。

Climate change plus overfishing have made the penguin feeding grounds a mirage. The habitat is indeed plankton-rich -but now it’s fish-poor. Researchers call this kind of scenario an “ecological trap.”

但是气候变化以及过度捕鱼使得企鹅的食物区变为了海市蜃楼。这些地区确实有着大量的浮游生物，但如今却鱼类匮乏。研究者们称此为“生态陷阱”。

“It’s a situation where you have a signal that previously pointed an animal towards good quality habitat. That habitat’s been changed, usually by rapidly induced human pressures, usually anthropogenic change-and the signal stays, but the underlying quality in the environment deteriorates.”

“某些特征过去会指引某种动物前往高质量栖息地，但这些栖息地可能会因为人类高密集的施压产生变化。这种情况下，原来的指引特征还在，但环境质量却已经发生恶化了。”

University of Exeter zoologist Richard Sherley. He and his team used satellite imaging to track the dispersal of 54 recently fledged African penguins from eight sites along southern Africa. Historically, the birds benefitted from tons of fish off the coasts of Angola, Namibia and western South Africa, but now they’re going hungry.

埃克塞特大学动物学家理查德·谢利（Richard Sherley）如是说。他和他的团队使用卫星成像追踪了非洲南部8个地点共54只成熟非洲企鹅。过去，它们可以享用安哥拉、纳米比亚和南非西部沿海成吨的鱼类，但现在它们陷入了饥荒。

“I was really hoping we’d see them going east, and finding areas where the fish had shifted to…so I was quite surprised to be wrong, and unfortunately quite sad to be wrong. It ends up being quite a sad story for the penguins.”

“我本以为它们会向东进发，找到鱼类转移后的场所……所以当发现它们没有这样做时时我很惊讶，但为此感到忧虑。这是对这些企鹅来说是一场悲剧。”

The researchers calculate that by falling into this ecological trap, African penguin populations on South Africa’s Western Cape have declined by around 80 percent. The findings are in the journal Current Biology. [Richard B. Sherley et al., Metapopulation Tracking Juvenile Penguins Reveals an Ecosystem-wide Ecological Trap]

研究者们估计，由于生态陷阱，南非西开普省的非洲企鹅数量减少了约80%。这项结果发表在了《当代生物学》上。

Some research groups are exploring the idea of translocating chicks to a place where they can’t get trapped, like the Eastern Cape. But Sherley thinks that a longer-term solution means implementing regulations to create more sustainable fisheries, something that he says has public support.

一些团队正在研究是否可以把这些企鹅转移到没有生态陷阱的地区，比如东开普省。但是谢利认为，要想长期解决这个问题，就得出台一些规定来建立可持续发展的渔场，这样也会得到公众的支持。

And as for the penguins?

至于这些企鹅呢？

“There’s not necessarily yet in an extinction vortex. So it’s not hopeless yet.”

“现在它们还没有陷入灭绝漩涡，还有希望。”

But time flies. Unlike penguins.

但是时间不等人啊，这些企鹅亟待拯救。

-Jason G. Goldman