大西洋月刊：110亿件携带病菌的塑料正在破坏珊瑚 [美国媒体]

11 Billion Pieces of Plastic Are Riddling Corals With Disease

110亿件携带病菌的塑料正在破坏珊瑚



In Asia-Pacific reefs, the majority of corals with junk on them have some kind of infection.

在亚太地区的珊瑚礁中，大多数存在垃圾的珊瑚都遭到了某种形式的感染。

Coral reefs are meant to be riots of color, but those that Joleah Lamb studied in the Indo-Pacific were colorful for all the wrong reasons. Their branches and crevices were frequently festooned with plastic junk. “We came across chairs, chip wrappers, Q-tips, garbage bags, water bottles, old nappies,” she says. “Everything you see on the beach is probably lying on the reef. And it seems like it’s getting worse.”

珊瑚礁本来就是五彩斑斓的，但Joleah Lamb在印度太平洋地区研究的那些珊瑚礁的色彩却都是因为各种错误的原因而出现的。它们的枝杈和裂缝经常为塑料垃圾所装饰。她说：“我们看到的是椅子、芯片包装纸、棉签、垃圾袋、水瓶、旧尿布。你在海滩上看到的一切都可能落在礁石上。而且情况看起来越来越糟了。”

Whenever Lamb or her colleagues from Cornell University found a piece of plastic, they would lift it up to study the health of the coral underneath. And almost every time, that coral would be riddled with disease. “It’s just a disaster under there,” she says.

当来自康奈尔大学的Lamb和她的同事们发现一块塑料时，他们就会把它拿起来，研究它下面珊瑚的健康状况。几乎每一次，他们都会发现珊瑚正被疾病所困扰。她说道：“这下面是一场灾难”。

Over four years, the team analyzed more than 124,000 corals, spanning 159 reefs in four countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia. They found that under normal circumstances, just 4 percent of corals are afflicted by some kind of disease. But infections strike down 89 percent of corals that come into contact with plastic.

在四年的时间里，该研究小组分析了超过12.4万件的珊瑚，其中包括来自四个国家的159个珊瑚礁：缅甸、泰国、印度尼西亚和澳大利亚。他们发现，在正常情况下，只有4%的珊瑚会受到某种疾病的折磨。但是，与塑料接触的珊瑚的感染率会提高到89%。

“I didn’t think we would be the ones to write this study,” says Lamb, because other scientists have already done so much research on plastic pollution. They’ve estimated that 5 trillion tiny pieces of plastic float in the seas. They’ve shown that some gets swallowed by seabirds because it smells like food. They’ve documented plastic waste on the shores of the world’s remotest islands.

“我过去不认为我们会去撰写这份研究成果”，Lamb说，因为其他科学家已经做了很多关于塑料污染的研究。他们估计有5万亿件的塑料漂浮在海面上。他们已经证明了其中一些被海鸟吞噬，因为它闻起来像食物。他们记录到了世界上最偏远的岛屿上也出现了塑料垃圾。

But to Lamb’s surprise, no one had really estimated the extent of plastic junk on coral reefs, or studied how that junk relates to disease. Indeed, when people think about the many ills befalling reefs—rising temperatures, acidifying waters, overfishing, nutrient pollution, ravenous starfish—plastic rarely gets a mention.

但令Lamb惊讶的是，没有人真正估计过珊瑚礁上塑料垃圾的污染程度，也没有人去研究垃圾与疾病的关系。事实上，当人们想到了不断上升的温度、酸化的海水、过度捕捞、营养污染、贪婪的海星时，塑料问题很少被提及。

Worse still, plastic-induced ailments disproportionately affect the corals that provide important habitats for fish—the ones that create intricate branches and layers. That same architectural complexity becomes easily filled and entwined with plastic, so these corals are eight times more likely to be diseased than simpler ones with rounded shapes.

更糟糕的是，塑料引发的疾病会对珊瑚造成严重的影响，这些珊瑚为鱼类提供了重要的栖息地，而鱼类则创造了复杂的珊瑚枝和岩层。同样的结构复合体也很容易被塑料填满，所以这些珊瑚的患病几率比那些圆形的珊瑚高八倍。

In fairness, not all reefs are strewn with plastic. Lamb never saw much of it in the Great Barrier Reef, for example. But “in Indonesia, we were seeing 26 pieces of plastic in an area the size of a Manhattan two-bedroom apartment,” she says. The Asia-Pacific region is home to eight of the world’s top 10 plastic-polluting countries, and more than half of the world’s coral reefs. According to estimates from Lamb’s team, those reefs are currently covered with around 11 billion pieces of plastic—and that’s likely a gross underestimate because it doesn’t account for contributions from China, the world’s top plastic polluter.

公平地说，并不是所有的珊瑚礁都是布满塑料的。例如，大堡就未曾出现过太多这样的东西。但是“在印尼，我们看到的了26块有曼哈顿一套两居室公寓大小的塑料”，她说到。亚太地区拥有全球十大污染最严重的国家中的八个，而世界上一半以上的珊瑚礁都在这里。根据Lamb团队的估计，这些珊瑚礁目前被大约110亿块塑料覆盖着，这一数字很有可能被低估了，因为它没有考虑到来自中国的贡献。

This problem is only going to get worse. Half of all the plastic that has ever existed was made in just the last 13 years, and production is still accelerating. Around nine tons are created every second. By 2025, Lamb’s team estimated that around 15.7 billion pieces will be entangled in Asia-Pacific reefs.

这个问题只会变得更糟。所有曾经存在的塑料中有一半都是过去13年制造的，而且生产还在加速。每秒钟大约有九吨塑料被生产出来。到2025年，Lamb团队估计约有157亿块碎片将被卷入亚太地区的珊瑚礁中。

It’s not clear how that plastic actually leads to disease, and the exact route probably differs from one infection to the other. In black-band disease, a mat of dark algae moves across a coral, leaving dead white tissue in its wake. Those algae thrive in dark, low-oxygen environments—the kind you’d find under a piece of plastic. Skeletal eroding band disease also involves a spreading wave of death with a white trail, but it is caused by a protozoan that invades through wounded tissue. Perhaps sharp plastic fragments are cutting the corals, giving the protozoan an easy entrance.

目前还不清楚这种塑料是如何导致疾病的，确切的路线可能与一对一的不同。在黑带病中，一团黑海藻会在一片珊瑚上移动，从而留下了死白的组织。这些藻类在黑暗、低氧环境中生长，而你可以在塑料片下面找到这样的环境。骨骼侵蚀带病还包括一种带有白色轨迹的死亡波纹，但它是由一种原生动物引起的，它侵入了受伤的组织内。也许正是锋利的塑料碎片割伤了珊瑚，使原生动物很容易进入其中。

Other diseases, like the aptly named white syndrome, are caused by opportunistic bacteria like Vibrio, which have a penchant for hitchhiking on plastic debris. “Plastic could be perfect rafts, full of pores and pits that are beneficial to the Vibrio, which they then introduce into the corals,” says Lamb.

其他的疾病——比如“白化综合症”——则是由像弧菌这样的机会主义细菌引起的，这些细菌喜欢在塑料碎片上搭便车。Lamb指出：“塑料可以是完美的皮筏，其中充满了气孔和凹坑，它们对弧菌是有益的，然后又将它们引入到了珊瑚中”。

“This is a very important study for coral-reef biologists and managers, as it uates a driver of disease that has never been addressed,” says Rebecca Vega Thurber, from Oregon State University, who studies the microbes that live on corals.

来自俄勒冈州立大学的Rebecca Vega Thurber——他研究的是生活在珊瑚上的微生物——说道：“对珊瑚生物学家和管理人员来说，这是一项非常重要的研究，因为它评估了一种从未被解决的疾病的驱动因素”。

“Threats to coral reefs come in many forms, but many occur simultaneously,” Vega Thurber adds. For example, many reefs have been hit by several consecutive years of severe bleaching, where unusually warm temperatures force them to expel the algae that provide them with nutrients and color. They then turn ghostly white—hence, bleaching—and risk starving to death. Bleaching is fundamentally a problem of climate change, but its effects can be exacerbated by, say, pollution or overfishing, which reduce the resilience of reefs. Diseases are especially problematic. “Corals can recover their algae after bleaching,” says Lamb. “But with diseases, they lose their tissues, and they aren’t getting those back.”

Vega Thurber补充说道：“对珊瑚礁的威胁有多种形式，但很多都是同时发生的。”比如，许多珊瑚礁遭受了连续数年的严重漂白，在那里，异常高的温度迫使它们排出为它们提供营养和颜色的藻类。然后，它们就会变白——因此就被漂白了——并且冒着被饿死的危险。从根本上来说，珊瑚被漂白是气候变化的问题，但它的影响可能会因污染或过度捕捞而被加剧，从而降低珊瑚礁的恢复力。疾病尤其是一个问题。“珊瑚在漂白后可以恢复它们身上的海藻”，Lamb说，“但是一旦感染了疾病，它们就失去了组织体，它们就无法得以恢复了”。

“Given that damage from plastics can increase the likelihood of disease, this suggests an easy target for reducing this effect,” says Vega Thurber. “Plastics are something that can be managed at the local level, with greater success than perhaps efforts to reduce global warming. And unlike with climate change, the reduction of plastic pollution is not a controversial topic and might be an issue that could garner international support.”

Vega Thurber指出：“有鉴于塑料的危害可能会增加感染疾病的可能性，它指明了降低这种效果的一个简单目标。塑料是一种可以在区域层面上进行管理的东西，相比于减少全球变暖的努力，它可以取得更大的成功。与气候变化不同的是，减少塑料污染并不是一个有争议的话题，而且可能可以获得更大的国际支持。”