天然湖里也得开增氧机了?

You'd never suspect it on a whisper-still morning, with the mountains and marsh reflecting off the water, but Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon is a tough place to be a fish.

在一个风和浪静的早晨,群山和沼泽倒映在水面上,而此时你绝不会想到在这俄勒冈州南部的克拉马斯湖上游,对鱼来说是一个很难存活的地方。

The shortnose and Lost River suckers provide a case in point.

短鼻鱼和罗斯特河吸盘鱼就是两个典型的例子。

The two species of fish, which look like a big-lipped cross between a carp and cod, used to be common in this lake.

这两种鱼看起来像是鲤鱼和鳕鱼杂交后的大嘴鱼种,本来在这个湖里很常见。

For millennia, they were an important traditional food source for the local tribes.

数千年来,它们是当地部落重要的传统食物来源。

The federal government considers them endangered species.

而如今联邦政府认为它们属于濒危物种。

There's a population of long-lived adult suckers hanging on and continuing to reproduce, but virtually none of their offspring are surviving for longer than a year.

这里有一群长寿的成年吸盘鱼,它们会继续繁殖,但实际上它们的后代都活不过一年。

"The juvenile sucker, they're dying off. They're not recruiting new adults," says Mason Terry, a renewable energy professor at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls.

位于克拉马斯瀑布的俄勒冈理工学院的可再生能源教授梅森·特里表示:“年幼的吸盘鱼正在消亡。他们没能长成新的成年吸盘鱼。”

Poor water quality — exacerbated by the warming climate — is considered a significant cause of the sucker death.

恶劣的水质——由于气候变暖而加剧——被认为是导致吸盘鱼死亡的重要原因。

One key problem for the Upper Klamath is a low dissolved oxygen issue called hypoxia.

克拉马斯河上游的一个关键问题是低溶解氧,即缺氧。

Fish breathe oxygen out of the water, and the oxygen levels here can drop extremely low, especially in late summer.

鱼从水中呼吸氧气,而这里的氧气水平会下降到极低,尤其是在夏末。

That coincides with the time juvenile suckers appear to just vanish from the lake.

这与幼鱼从湖中消失的时间吻合。

When Terry learned that low oxygen levels were one of the suspected reasons the endangered suckers aren't surviving into adulthood, he had an idea.

当特里得知缺氧是这些濒临灭绝的吸盘鱼无法存活到成年的可疑原因之一时,他有了一个想法。

"I thought, Why don't we do what they do in fish ponds or in your aquarium? Why don't we just try and bubble some air down in there and see what happens?" he says.

“我想,我们为什么不像它们在鱼塘或水族馆里做的那样呢?”为什么我们不试着往里面通点空气,看看会发生什么呢?”他说。

"See if there's just a little boost to affect this one factor that might be a cause of their mortality."

“我们想看看这是否可以作为一个促进因素,来干扰这种可能导致幼鱼死亡的成因。”

Terry's renewable energy students at OIT drag a floating solar panel raft — about as large as a single-car garage — out of the lake and onto the Rocky Point boat landing on the northwest side of the large, shallow lake.

特里在俄勒冈理工学院的可再生能源专业的学生拖着一个漂浮的太阳能板筏——大约只有一辆车的车库那么大——出了湖,登上了在湖的西北方向的岩石点码头。

This is the final assembly site for a solar-powered aeration system designed by Terry.

这是特里设计的太阳能曝气系统的最后组装点。

Ian Riley and classmate Mohammed Bawazeer walk it over to a plastic dry box that protects all the electrical components of the system from the elements.

伊恩·赖利和同学默罕默德·巴瓦泽尔走到一个塑料干盒前,这个干盒可以保护系统的所有电子元件不受各种因素的影响。

Four 310-watt panels run two compressors that would push air — with all the oxygen it contains — down into the lake.

四个310瓦的太阳能板带动两个压缩机,将空气及其所含的全部氧气推入湖中。

Any power left over would go to charge the batteries, which are designed to power the compressors for 32 hours without sun.

任何剩余的电力都将用于给电池充电,而电池的设计目的是在没有阳光的情况下为压缩机提供32小时的动力。

Jennifer Berdyugin is coordinating the project, and checks that all the components are hooked up.

詹妮弗·柏杜因正在协调这个项目,并检查所有的组件是否都连接好了。

"All that's left to do is turn on the pump and then make sure that it's bubbling the water," she says.

她说:“剩下要做的就是打开水泵,确保水在冒泡。

"So, really, the telltale will be, 'Are there bubbles or not?'"

“所以,真正的问题是,'到底能不能出来泡沫呢?’”

The renewable energy students drag the solar raft back into the lake, and with the push of a button the compressor came to life.

可再生能源的学生们把太阳能筏拖回湖中,按下按钮,压缩机就启动了。

The air hose turns into an underwater sparkler as air is pushed through thousands of tiny holes.

当空气通过成千上万个小孔时,空气管就变成了水下的泡沫。

"Bubble, bubble!" Riley calls across the noise as another student claps in celebration.

“冒泡了!冒泡了!”莱利隔着喧闹声喊道,另一名学生在一旁鼓掌庆祝。

The team has assembled two rafts that are currently anchored at a site on the lake where juvenile suckers have been found to gather.

该团队已经组装了两艘木筏,目前停泊在湖上的一个地方,那里已经发现了幼年吸盘鱼聚集在一起。

"It's a way to provide an area for the suckers to get out of the bad water quality and at least have somewhere to hide until things get better," says U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Josh Rasmussen, who works on sucker conservation in the Klamath Basin.

美国鱼类和野生动物生物学家乔希·拉斯穆森在克拉马斯盆地从事吸盘鱼的保护工作,他说:“这可以为吸盘鱼提供一个区域,让它们摆脱糟糕的水质,至少在情况好转之前有地方可以躲藏。”

The chemistry of lakes worldwide has been altered by human development and agriculture.

人类的发展和农业的发展改变了世界各地湖泊的化学成分。

Ken Ashley, a lake aeration specialist at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, says the problems are only going to get worse with climate change.

英属哥伦比亚理工学院湖泊曝气专家肯·阿什利表示,随着气候变化,这些问题只会变得更糟。

"As the climate gets warmer and lakes are stratified longer, then the effects of the low oxygen are going to get magnified and there's going to be more algal problems, and more fish kills, and more taste and odor problems," he says.

他说:“随着气候变暖,湖泊分层时间延长,低氧的影响将被放大,会出现更多的藻类问题,更多的鱼类死亡,以及更多的味觉和嗅觉问题。”

"And there'll be more demand to do something about it."

“而且会有更多的人要求对此采取行动。”

When the temperature of water on the surface rises, it prevents oxygen from getting to lake bottoms.

当水面温度上升时,它会阻止氧气到达湖底。

Aeration can be a solution.

曝气可以成为一种解决的办法。

"It's a growth industry, unfortunately," he says.

“不幸的是,曝气产业越来越火了,”他说道。

One challenge at Upper Klamath Lake is that it's really big, the largest freshwater lake in Oregon.

上克拉马斯湖面临的一个挑战是它非常大,是俄勒冈州最大的淡水湖。

A pinpoint or two of aeration floating in a hundred-square-mile lake won't be the ultimate answer.

在方圆100平方英里的湖中漂浮一两处通风设施并不是最终的解决之道。

But it could help conditions immediately around the rafts.

但它可以立即改善通风点周围的情况。

OIT's Terry says preliminary measures show oxygen levels in the vicinity of the rafts have improved.

俄勒冈州理工学院的特里说,初步测量显示,曝气筏附近的氧气水平有所改善。

The Klamath Tribes are monitoring the systems.

克拉马斯部落正在监控这些系统。

And next year, Terry will use the information they collect to tweak and launch two more solar aeration systems.

明年,特里将利用他们收集的信息来调整和推出另外两个太阳能曝气系统。

But the success of this project won't ultimately be known until the next fish counts reveal whether any Upper Klamath Lake suckers survive past their first birthday.

但一直要等到下一次鱼类计数显示出是否有克拉马斯上游湖吸盘鱼活过它们的一岁生日,我们才知道这个项目到底成功没有。

问题

文中提到曝气装置是为了提升水中哪种物质的含量?

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