1.This is the first of two rather extraordinary photographs I’m going to show you today.
这是我今天要给大家展示的两张非同寻常的图片中的第一张
2.It was taken 18 years ago, I was 19 years old at the time.
它是在18年前拍的 当时我19岁
3.I had just returned from one of the deepest dives I’d ever made at that time, a little over 200 feet.
刚刚从那时所参与的最深的一次潜水归来 比200英尺深一点点
4.And, I had caught this little fish here, and it turns out that that particular one was the first live one of that ever taken alive.
在那里我抓到了这条小鱼 它成为了第一条被活捕上来后还能存活下来的鱼
5.I’m not just an ichthyologist, I’m a bona fide fish nerd.
我不仅仅是一个鱼类学家，我还是一个真正的鱼痴
6.And to a fish nerd, this is some pretty exciting stuff.
而对于鱼痴来说，这是一个非常让人兴奋的工作
7.And more exciting was the fact that the person who took this photo was a guy named Jack Randall, the greatest living ichthyologist on Earth,
而更让人兴奋的是，为我拍这张照片的人 名字叫做Jack Randall 世界上还健在的最伟大的鱼类学家
8.the Grand Poobah of fish nerds, if you will.
你也可以称他是鱼痴的头儿
9.And so, it was really exciting to me to have this moment in time, it really set the course for the rest of my life.
因此，这个时刻的及时到来令我相当兴奋 我以后的人生路线也由此划定
10.But really the most significant thing, the most profound thing about this picture is that it was taken two days before I was completely paralyzed from the neck down.
但关于这张图片最重要，最意义深远的事情 是在拍完它两天之后 我的颈部就完全瘫痪了。
11.I made a really stupid kind of mistake that most 19-year-old males do when they think they’re immortal, and I got a bad case of the bends,
我犯了一个非常愚蠢的错误 就像大多数19岁的小伙子们，他们认为自己是死不了 我得上了严重的减压病
12.and was paralyzed, and had to be flown back for treatment.
全身瘫痪，不得不飞回来进行治疗
13.I learned two really important things that day.
那天我明白了两件非常重要的事情
14.The first thing I learned — well, I’m mortal, that’s a really big one.
第一，我是终有一死的，这确实很重要
15.And the second thing I learned was that I knew, with profound certainty, this is exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life.
第二，我非常肯定地知道 我在余生中所要从事的究竟是什么
16.I had to focus all my energies towards going to find new species of things down on deep coral reefs.
我必须将精力都专注地投入到 对珊瑚礁深处那些新物种的发现。
17.Now, when you think of a coral reef, this is what most people think of — all these big, hard, elaborate corals and lots of bright, colorful fishes and things.
现在，当你们想到珊瑚礁时，这就是大多数人所想到的 所有这些巨大、坚硬、精巧的珊瑚，还有大量多姿多彩的鱼类以及其他
18.But, this is really just the tip of the iceberg.
但，这仅仅是冰山一角
19.If you look at this sort of diagram of a coral reef, we know a lot about that part up near the top, and the reason we know so much about it
如果你看一下这张珊瑚礁的图表 我们对最上方的那部分了解很多 之所以如此，是因为
20.is scuba divers can very easily go down there and access it.
水肺潜水员能轻松地下潜到那里
21.There is a problem with scuba though, in that it imposes some limitations on how deep you can go, and it turns out that depth is about 200 feet.
然而水肺（水下呼吸器）有个问题 它给你的下潜深度设了限制 大概是200英尺
22.I’ll get into why that is in just a minute.
等一会我会解释这是为什么
23.But, the point is scuba divers generally stay less than 100 feet deep, and very rarely go much below this, at least, not with any kind of sanity.
但，关键是水肺潜水员们通常只待在100英尺深度以上 而很少，至少是有意识地潜到这个深度以下
24.So, to go deeper, most biologists have turned to submersibles.
所以，如果要到更深处，多数的生物学家会选择潜水器
25.Now, submersibles are great, wonderful things, but if you’re going to spend 30,000 dollars a day to use one of these things, and it’s capable of going 2,000 feet,
现在，潜水器是很了不起的东西 但如果你要每天花3万美元来利用某个潜水器 而它能够下潜的深度是2000英尺
26.you’re sure not going to go farting around up here in a couple of hundred feet, you’re going to go way, way, way, down deep.
那么你肯定不会就在这几百英尺的地方晃来晃去 你会向下，向下，潜到深处去
27.So, the bottom line is that almost all research using submersibles has taken place well below 500 feet.
归根结底，几乎所有利用潜水器的研究 都是在超过500英尺深的水下进行的
28.Now, it’s pretty obvious at this point that there’s this zone here in the middle and that’s the zone that really centers around my own personal pursuit of happiness.
讲到这里，可以很明显地看到中间的这个区域 而这就是围绕着我个人幸福追求的那个区域
29.I want to find out what’s in this zone.
我想找出在里面有什么
30.We know almost nothing about it.
我们几乎对这里一无所知
31.Scuba divers can’t get there, submarines go right on past it.
水肺潜水员到不了那里，潜水器又不在那里停留
32.It took me a year to learn how to walk again after I had my diving accident in Palau and during that year I spent a lot of time learning
自从帛琉群岛的潜水事故之后，我花了一年时间才重新学会行走 那一年里，我花了大量时间学习
33.about physics and physiology of diving and figuring out how to overcome these limitations.
学习潜水的物理学和生理学过程 并找出如何克服这些限制的方法
34.So, I’m just going to show you a basic idea.
我这就给你们展示一些基本的概念
35.We’re all breathing air right now, air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, about 20 percent oxygen, about 80 percent nitrogen is in our lungs.
此时此刻，我们呼吸的空气其实是氧气和氮气的混合物 其中大约20%是氧气，80%是氮气
36.And there’s a phenomenon called Henry’s Law that says that gases will dissolve into a fluid in proportion to the partial pressures which you’re exposing them to.
有一种称为“亨利定律”的现象 指的是气体在液体中的溶解 与该液面上气体所受到的分压成正比
37.So, basically the gas dissolves into our body.
所以基本上气体会溶解到我们的体内
38.The oxygen is bound by metabolism, we use it for energy.
氧气是我们获取能量所必需的，与新陈代谢息息相关
39.The nitrogen just sort of floats around in our blood and tissues, and that’s all fine, that’s how we’re designed.
而氮气只是我们血液和组织里的某种漂浮物而已 这没什么关系，我们生来如此
40.The problem happens when you start to go underwater.
问题在于当你开始下潜到水下的时候
41.Now, the deeper you go underwater, the higher the pressure is.
潜得越深，所受到的压力越大
42.If you were to go down to a depth of about 130 feet, which is the recommended limit for most scuba divers, you get this pressure effect.
当你到达大约130英尺的深度时 这是大多数水肺潜水者的建议极限 你就会感觉到某种压力效应
43.And the effect of that pressure is that you have an increased density of gas molecules in every breath you take.
即在你的每一次呼吸中 气体的密度是逐渐增加的
44.And then over time, those gas molecules dissolve into your blood and tissues and start to fill you up.
过一会，这些气体分子就会溶解到你的血液和组织中 并开始充满你的体内
45.Now, if you were to go down to say 300 feet, you don’t have five times as many gas molecules in your lungs, you’ve got 10 times as many gas molecules in your lungs.
如果你要下潜到300英尺 那你的肺里就不仅仅只充满相当于平时五倍体积的气体 而是充满相当于平时10倍体积的气体
46.And, sure enough, they dissolve into your blood and tissues as well.
肯定的是，它们同样会溶解到你的血液和组织里
47.And of course, if you were to down to where there’s 15 times as much — the deeper you go, the more exacerbating the problem becomes.
当然，如果你继续往下的话还有可能是15倍 潜得越深，这个问题就会越严重
48.And the problem, the limitation of diving with air is all those dots in your body — all the nitrogen and all the oxygen.
而这个带空气潜水的极限问题 也就是在你体内的所有这些点——所有的氮气和氧气
49.There’s three basic limitations of scuba diving.
水肺潜水有三个基本的限制
50.The first limitation is the oxygen — oxygen toxicity.
第一个限制就是氧气 氧中毒
51.Now, we all know the song — “Love is like oxygen.
我们都知道那首歌—“爱情就像氧气，
52.You get too much, you get too high.
得到太多，你会太兴奋。
53.Not enough, and you’re going to die.”
得到不够，你就会死去”
54.Well, in the context of diving, you get too much, you die also.
在潜水这个问题上，你得到太多也会挂掉
55.You die also because oxygen toxicity can cause a seizure — makes you convulse underwater, not a good thing to happen underwater.
导致死亡的另一个原因是氧中毒引起的急性痉挛 在水下，这可不是什么好事情
56.It happens because there’s too much concentration of oxygen in your body.
罪魁祸首就是体内过高的氧气浓度
57.The nitrogen has two problems.
氮气会造成两个问题
58.One of them is what Jacques Cousteau called “rapture of the deep.”
其中之一就是雅克·库斯托所说的“深海晕眩”
59.It’s nitrogen narcosis.
也就是氮气麻醉
60.It makes you loopy.
它会使你晕头转向
61.The deeper you go, the loopier you get.
潜得越深，你就越晕
62.You don’t want to drive drunk, you don’t want to dive drunk, so that’s a real big problem.
你不会愿意醉酒开车，你也不会愿意醉酒潜水，所以这确实是个大问题
63.And of course, the third problem is the one I found out the hard way in Palau, which is the bends.
当然，第三个问题也就是我在帛琉群岛那段艰难旅程所发现的 减压病（bends）
64.Now the one thing that I forgot to mention, is that to obviate the problem of the nitrogen narcosis — all of those blue dots in our body —
我忘记提到的一点是 如何排除氮气麻醉的问题 也就是我们体内的这些蓝色小点
65.you remove the nitrogen and you replace it with helium.
我们可以用氦气来替换氮气
66.Now helium’s a gas, there’s a lot of reasons why helium’s good, it’s a tiny molecule, it’s inert, it doesn’t give you narcosis.
氦气也是种气体，它有许多好处 它的分子很小，同时是惰性气体 它不会导致你的昏迷
67.So that’s the basic concept that we use.
这就是我们所用到的基本设想
68.But, the theory’s relatively easy.
但这一理论只是相对比较容易而已
69.The tricky part is the implementation.
最有趣的是如何将之变得可行
70.So, this is how I began, about 15 years ago, and I’ll admit, it wasn’t exactly the smartest of starts, but, you know, you got to start somewhere.
这就是我大约15年前着手开始时做的 我承认，这肯定不是最聪明的开端 但无论如何，你总是要开始的
71.And, at the time, really I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what I was doing almost nobody did.
而且那个时候，我还真不是唯一一个不知道自己正在做什么的人 几乎没有人知道
72.And this rig was actually used for a dive of 300 feet.
这个装置实际上是用于300英尺深处的潜水
73.But, over time we got a little bit better at it, and we came up with this really sophisticated-looking rig with four scuba tanks and five regulators
但过了一阵，情况有了一点好转 我们搞出了这个看起来很是先进的装置 上面有四个气罐和五个调节器
74.and all the right gas mixtures and all that good stuff.
还有合适的混合气体以及所有要用到的好东西
75.And it was fine and dandy, and it allowed us to go down and find new species.
它看上去既漂亮又时髦 能让我们潜水去寻找新的物种
76.This picture was taken 300 feet deep, catching new species of fish.
这是在300英尺深处拍的照片，他正在捕捉鱼类新种
77.But, the problem was it didn’t allow us much time.
但问题在于我们的潜水不能进行太久
78.For all its bulk and size, it only gave us about 15 minutes, at most, down at those sort of depths.
尽管它的体积挺大块 却只能保证最多在这样的深度待15分钟
79.We needed more time.
我们需要更多的时间
80.There had to be a better way.
必须找出更好的方法
81.And, indeed, there is a better way.
而且，事实上，的确有个更好的方法
82.In 1994, I was fortunate enough to get access to these prototype closed-circuit rebreathers.
1994年，我幸运地有机会用到 这些闭路式换气器的原型
83.Alright, closed-circuit rebreather — what is it about it that makes it different from scuba, and why is it better?
那么，闭路式换气器– 它与水肺有什么不同， 又为什么说它更好？
84.Well, there are three main advantages to a rebreather.
换气器有三个主要的优点
85.One, they’re quiet, they don’t make any noise.
第一，它们很安静，不会产生任何噪音
86.Two, they allow you to stay underwater longer.
第二，它们能使你在水里待的更久
87.Three, they allow you to go deeper.
第三，它们让你潜得更深
88.And, how is it that they do that?
那么，它们是怎么做到的？
89.Well, in order to really understand how they do that you kind of have to take off the hood, and look underneath and see what’s going on.
想真正了解它们是怎么做到这些的 你必须把外罩拿掉，看看里面是怎么工作的
90.There are three basic systems to a closed- circuit rebreather.
闭路式换气器里有三个基本的系统
91.The most fundamental of these is called the breathing loop.
其中最重要的称为呼吸环路（breathing loop）
92.It’s a breathing loop because you breathe off of it, and it’s a closed loop, and you breathe the same gas around and around and around.
顾名思义，你利用它来呼吸 这是个闭合的环路，所以你会一圈又一圈地呼吸同样的气体
93.So there’s a mouthpiece that you put in your mouth, and there’s also a counterlung, or in this case, two counterlungs.
这里有个你要放在嘴里的接口管 这还有个气囊（counterlung） 或者像这里这个，两个气囊
94.Now, the counterlungs aren’t high-tech, they’re just simply flexible bags.
这些气囊并不是什么高科技，它们就是简单而又柔韧的袋子
95.They allow you to mechanically breathe, or mechanically ventilate.
它们是你能机动地呼吸，或机动地换气
96.When you exhale your breath, it goes in the exhale counterlung, when you inhale a breath, it comes from the inhale counterlung.
当你呼气的时候，气体进入呼出气囊 当你吸气的时候，气体从吸气气囊出来
97.It’s just pure mechanics, allowing you to cycle air through this breathing loop.
这只是纯粹的机械过程，使气体能在呼吸环里进行循环
98.And, the other component on a breathing loop is the carbon dioxide absorbent canister.
在呼吸环上的另外一个部件 是二氧化碳吸收罐
99.Now, as we breathe, we produce carbon dioxide, and that carbon dioxide needs to be scrubbed out of the system.
我们呼吸的时候会产生二氧化碳 这些二氧化碳需要从系统中除去
100.So there’s a chemical filter in there, that pulls the carbon dioxide out of the breathing gas so that when it comes back to us to breathe again, it’s safe to breathe again.
所以在那里面就有个化学过滤器 将二氧化碳从呼吸的气体中去除 这就使我们再次呼吸的时候，能安全地呼吸
101.So that’s the breathing loop in a nutshell.
以上介绍的就是外壳下面的呼吸环
102.Now the second main component of a closed-circuit rebreather is the gas system.
闭路式换气器的第二个主要部件是气体系统
103.Now the primary purpose of the gas system is to provide oxygen, to replenish the oxygen that your body consumes.
气体系统最重要的目的 是提供氧气，补充你身体所消耗的氧气
104.So the main tank, the main critical thing, is this oxygen gas supply cylinder we have here.
所以主要的容器，最关键的东西 就是这边这个氧气供应罐
105.But, if we only had an oxygen gas supply cylinder we wouldn’t be able to go very deep, because we’d run into oxygen toxicity very, very quickly.
但是，如果我们只有这么一个氧气供应罐 我们就不能潜得太深 因为我们很快就会产生氧中毒，非常快
106.So we need another gas, something to dilute the oxygen with and that, fittingly enough, is called the diluent gas supply.
所以我们需要另一种气体来稀释氧气 足够合适之后，我们称之为“稀释气体供应”
107.Now, in our applications we generally put air inside this diluent gas supply because it’s a very cheap and easy source of nitrogen.
现在，在这个装置里，我们就可以将空气输入稀释气体供应罐中 因为这是一种非常便宜和易得的氮气来源
108.So that’s where we get our nitrogen from.
我们的氮气就是从这里来的
109.But, if we want to go deeper, of course, we need another gas supply.
当然，如果想潜得更深，我们还需要补充另一种气体
110.We need helium, and the helium is what we really need to go deep.
我们需要氦气，它是我们深潜时所真正需要的
111.And usually we’ll have a slightly larger cylinder, it’s mounted exterior on the rebreather, like this.
通常我们用的是这个稍微大一点的罐子 它就像这样挂在换气器的外面
112.And that’s what we use to inject, as we start to do our deep dives.
当开始向深处潜水的时候，注入的氦气就来自这里
113.And we also have a second oxygen cylinder, that’s solely as a back-up in case there’s a problem with our first oxygen supply we can continue to breathe.
另外我们还有第二个氧气罐，仅仅作为后备 一旦第一个氧气供应出现问题，我们还能继续呼吸
114.And the way you manage all these different gases, and all these different gas supplies is this really high-tech, sophisticated gas block up on the front here
如何操纵所有这些气体及其供应 就在于前面这个先进的高科技气体控制器
115.where it’s easy to reach.
很容易摸到
116.It’s got all the valves and knobs and things you need to do to inject the right gases at the right time.
它上面的阀门和旋钮等可以让你 在合适的时间注入合适的气体
117.Now, normally you don’t have to do that because all of it’s done automatically for you with the electronics, the third system of a rebreather.
一般来说这些都是已经为你自动做好的 因为我们有电子设备，换气器的第三个系统
118.The most critical part of a rebreather are the oxygen sensors.
换气器上最重要的部件是氧气传感器
119.You need three of them, so that if one of them goes bad, you know which one it is.
你需要三个，这样如果其中一个坏了，你就知道是哪一个
120.You need voting logic.
你需要表决逻辑（voting logic）
121.You also have three microprocessors, any one of those computers can run the entire system so you have to lose two of them.
你还有三个微处理器 这些计算机中的任意一个都能控制整个系统 所以就算你失去了其中两个
122.There’s also back-up power supplies.
还有后备的能量供应
123.And of course, there’s multiple displays to get the information to the diver.
当然，少不了为潜水者提供信息的显示器
124.This is the high-tech gadgetry that allows us to do what we do on these kind of deep dives.
这就是那个能让我们在这种深度潜水中 能随心所欲的高科技小部件
125.And I can talk about it all day, just ask my wife.
我能一整天都谈论这些，问问我老婆就知道了
126.But, I want to move on to something that’s kind of much more interesting.
但，我想讲另一些更有趣的东西
127.I’m going to take you on a deep dive.
我将带你们深潜下去
128.I’m going to show you what it’s like to do one of these dives that we do.
我将向你们展示我们是怎么进行这类潜水的
129.We start up here on the boat, and for all this high-tech, expensive equipment this is still the best way to get in the water — just pfft! —
我们从船上开始，尽管这是部昂贵的高科技装备 这仍然是最好的入水方式—噗！
130.flop over the side of the boat.
怦然从船舷处落下
131.Now, as I showed you in the earlier diagram, these reefs that we dive on start out near the surface and they go almost vertically, completely straight down.
就像我之前给你们展示的那张图表 这些礁石就在我们开始潜水的水面附近 它们几乎是垂直地、完全直直地向下
132.So, we drop in the water, and we just sort of go over the edge of this cliff, and then we just start dropping, dropping, dropping.
所以我们在水里往下掉，好像要越过这个悬崖边缘一般 然后我们就开始往下掉，往下掉，往下掉
133.People have asked me, “It must take a long time to get there?”
有人问我，“到那儿一定花了不少时间吧？”
134.No, it only takes a couple of minutes to get all the way down to three or four hundred feet, which is where we’re aiming for.
不，只花了几分钟 我们就直落到三四百英尺处，我们的目的地
135.It’s kind of like skydiving in slow motion.
有点像慢动作的跳伞
136.It’s really a very interesting — you ever see “The Abyss” where Ed Harris, you know, he’s sinking down along the side of the wall?
这真的非常有趣 你们看过电影《深渊》（“The Abyss”）里面的Ed Harris? 沿着绝壁往下坠落的情景吧？
137.That’s kind of what it feels like. It’s pretty amazing.
这有点像那种感觉，美妙绝伦
138.Also, when you get down there, you find the water is very, very clear.
还有，下到那里，你会发现水非常非常的清澈
139.It’s extremely clear water, because there’s hardly any plankton.
极度清澈的水，因为那里几乎没有什么浮游生物
140.But, when you turn on your light, you look around at the caves, and all of a sudden you’re confronted with a tremendous amount of diversity,
但是，当你打开灯，环视这些洞穴时 你就会突然间面对巨大数量的生物多样性
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