形如噩梦的深海怪咖
01
Anglerfish, with their menacing gape and dangling lure, are among the most curious inhabitants of the deep ocean.
鮟鱇鱼，因为其恐怖的大嘴和悬垂的钓饵，是深海最奇特的生物之一。
Scientists have hardly ever seen them alive in their natural environment.
科学家们很少见过它们生活在自然环境中的样子。
That’s why a new video, captured in the waters around Portugal’s Azores islands, has stunned deep-sea biologists.
因此有一段新的在葡萄牙的亚速尔群岛附近水域拍摄的视频震惊了深海科学家。
It shows a fist-size female anglerfish, resplendent with bioluminescent lights and elongated whiskerlike structures projecting outward from her body.
视频中展示了一个拳头般大小的雌性鮟鱇鱼，浑身闪烁着生物荧光带有延长的胡须样的结构，正在保卫自己的身体免受外界侵扰。
And if you look closely, she’s got a mate: A dwarf male is fused to her underside, essentially acting as a permanent sperm provider.
如果仔细看的话，她还有个伴呢：一只侏儒般大小的雄性跟她的体侧融为一体，作为永远的精子供体。
“I’ve been studying these [animals] for most of my life and I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Ted Pietsch, a deep-sea fish researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“我一辈子都在研究这种动物，却从来没见过这样的画面，”特德.皮奇说，他是华盛顿大学西雅图分校的研究员。
Most of what we know about deep-sea anglerfish comes from dead animals pulled up in nets.
大部分现有的关于深海鮟鱇鱼的只是都来自于用网捞上来的它们的尸体。
Scientists have identified more than 160 species, but only a handful of videos exist—and this is the first to show a sexually united pair.
科学家们已经鉴定出了160个种，不过现在还有很少的视频—这是首次拍到正在交配的一对。
“So you can see how rare and important this discovery is,” Pietsch says. “It was really a shocker for me.”
“所以你可以想见这次发现有多么珍贵和重大了，”皮奇说。“真的惊到我了。”
The video was captured at a depth of 800 meters by deep-sea explorers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen in a submersible.
这段视频是由深海探险家克里斯滕和约阿希姆.雅可布森乘坐潜水艇在800米的深度发现的。
The husband and wife team was nearing the end of a grueling 5-hour dive along a steep deep-sea wall on the south side of São Jorge Island, when “something with a funny form” caught their eye, Kirsten Jakobsen says.
这对鮟鱇鱼夫妇是在一次疲惫的5小时潜水后期在圣乔治岛南侧陡峭的深海岩壁上拍到的，当时“一种奇形怪状的东西”吸引了他们的眼球，克里斯滕.雅可布森说道。
Aborting their plan to surface, the filmmakers followed the strange creature around for 25 minutes, capturing its movements through the submersible’s 1.4-meter-wide window.
暂时放弃上浮计划后，这两位视频拍摄者跟拍了这个奇特的生物25分钟，通过潜水艇的1.4米宽的窗户追踪它们的移动。
It was exciting, but also challenging to maneuver the craft to get the best images because the female was only about 16 centimeters long, she says.
这是非常令人兴奋的，不过要操纵前厅拍到最好的画面也很具有挑战性因为雌性只有16厘米长，她说。
After surfacing, the duo sent the video to Pietsch, who identified the species as Caulophryne jordani, known as the fanfin angler.
上浮后，这对潜水家将视频发给了皮奇，他鉴定出这个品种是尾柄鮟鱇，也叫做扇鳍鮟鱇鱼。
He was entranced by the species’s “gracefulness,” especially the way those whiskerlike structures—called filaments and fin rays—enveloped the animal.
他被这个物种的“优雅”所吸引，尤其是那些像胡须一样的（称为细丝和鳍条）.笼罩着它的结构。
“Any prey item touching one of those would cause the angler to turn and gobble up that particular animal,” he says.
“任何触碰到这些细丝的猎物都会让鮟鱇鱼转身然后被吞掉，”他说。
“They can’t afford to let a meal go by because there’s so little to eat down there.”
“深海的食物如此稀缺以至于它们不能放过任何食物。”
The video was captured in August 2016, but this is the first time it’s been released to the public.
视频拍摄于2016年8月，不过这次是首次向公众发布。
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