碧海蓝鲸 Still Blue
在亚加普科港的白色游艇之间，太平洋风暴号显得格外醒目：这艘工作船有着黑色船身，原是美国西岸的拖网渔船，现在则是研究船。港湾里有更大、更豪华的船
（有许多财富被投资在亚加普科的白色游艇上），但这艘长26公尺、外型朴实、艇首又高又黑的拖网渔船才是我要搭的。若要我从这里所有的船中挑选一艘来载我出海追寻蓝鲸一个月，我也会毫不犹豫地挑这艘。佛利普‧尼克林和我把装备送上船的阶梯、放进客舱时，我有一种近乎原始人的野性快感。
每次我发现自己愈来愈暴躁郁闷、郁郁寡欢，连续好几个月都坐在计算机前依着灯光、像隐士一般关在家里敲着键盘维生时，我就知道出海走走的时候到了，所以我一口就接下了太平洋风暴号的采访工作。由于这趟旅程是1月3日出航，我立下了三个新年新希望：尽力当个随和友善的船伴、写作要言简意赅、避免提及和《白鲸记》作者赫曼．梅尔维尔有关的事。
我有说过我们要找一只白鲸吗？
In Acapulco Harbor, amid the white yachts, R.V. Pacific Storm stood out: a working boat, black hulled, a West Coast trawler in a previous life, reborn now as a research vessel. There were bigger, more opulent boats in the harbor—fortunes are invested in the white yachts of Acapulco—but this 85-foot trawler, with its grim mien and high black bow, was the ship for me. Asked to choose, from all this fleet, the vessel to carry me on a month-long cruise in pursuit of blue whales, I would not have hesitated. As Flip Nicklin and I passed our gear up the trawler's ladder and stowed it in our cabin, I felt an almost savage contentment.
Call me Ishmael, if you like, but whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I have spent too many consecutive months at the computer keyboard, in artificial light, like some sort of troglodyte, self-imprisoned, pecking out my living, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. I jumped at the assignment on Pacific Storm. As the voyage was to depart on the third of January, I made three New Year's resolutions: I would try to be an affable shipmate. I would strip all the blubber from my prose. I would refrain from making a single allusion to Herman Melville.
Did I mention we were after a white whale?
真的，北太平洋东部的蓝鲸群（这群蓝鲸通常在加州外海度过夏天，我们要跟着牠们南迁）中，的确有一只白色的蓝鲸，可能是白子。四个月前，太平洋风暴号的一艘充气小艇在圣塔芭芭拉外海为这只鲸鱼植入了卫星卷标，但牠的4172号标签在植入几周后就不再传送讯号，现在行踪成谜。与太阳同步的绕极轨道气象卫星泰洛斯N系列再也追踪不到牠了，但牠是我们希望能在中美洲外海看到的身影之一。
我们在太平洋风暴号上安顿好后，尼克林盘腿坐在床铺上装设他的Nikon D200相机及Sea & Sea镜头防水罩。他从一小条软管中挤出一点硅油膏，以指尖将它涂抹在防水罩的蓝色O型环边缘。他也打开相机的后盖，为后方的O型环做同样的处理。尼克林是新一代的捕鲸人，他的工作不是捕捉鲸鱼取得鱼油，而是捕捉鲸鱼的身影；那台相机就是他最爱的武器。
太平洋风暴号出海了。我们朝正南方航行了一段路程，以避开沿着中美洲往东偏移的特提宛太白风，然后再转向西南方，朝我们那温度异常的目的地行进。
哥斯达黎加圆突区是中美洲西部的海风与洋流会合所形成的寒冷涌升流，蕴含丰富的养分。它的位置不固定，会稍做游移，不过通常是在离岸500至800公里处。涌升流会把温跃层（深海冰水与海面温水的交会层）送到海面下十公尺处，缺氧、冰冷的水则会把硝酸盐、磷酸盐、硅酸盐与其它养分一起从深海带上来。这份天赐之礼（或许应该称为海赐之礼，因它不是从天而降，而是从深海涌出）构成了一片海中的绿洲。圆突区涌出的养分滋养微小的浮游植物，浮游动物摄取这些浮游植物维生，而这些浮游动物又引来更大型的动物；其中有些确实相当庞大。
It's true. In the eastern North Pacific population of blue whales—the group that summers mostly off California and whose migration we were following south—there is a white blue whale, maybe an albino. An inflatable skiff from Pacific Storm had satellite tagged this whale off Santa Barbara four months before, but his tag, number 4172, had ceased transmitting a few weeks after implantation, and now his whereabouts were a mystery. The sun-synchronous, polar-orbiting TIROS N satellites could no longer track him, but he was one of the animals we hoped to see off Central America.
When we had settled in on Pacific Storm, Nicklin, cross-legged on his bunk, set up his Nikon D200, with its Sea & Sea underwater dome. He squeezed a dab of silicone grease from a small tube onto his fingertip and ran it around the rim of the dome's blue O-ring. He opened the back of the camera and gave a similar treatment to the O-ring at the stern. Nicklin is a new kind of whaler. His job is not to render the oil, but to capture the essence of cetaceans, and the Nikon is his favorite harpoon.
Pacific Storm put to sea. We sailed a leg due south to avoid the Tehuantepec winds along the eastward bend of Central America, then turned southwest toward the temperature anomaly that was our destination.
The Costa Rica Dome is an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water generated by a meeting of winds and currents west of Central America. The location is not fixed; it meanders a bit, but the dome is reliably encountered somewhere between 300 and 500 miles offshore. The upwelling brings the thermocline—the boundary layer between deep, cold water and the warm water of the surface—up as high as 30 feet from the top. Upwelling with the cold, oxygen-poor water from the depths come nitrate, phosphate, silicate, and other nutrients. This manna, or anti-manna—a gift not from heaven but from the deep—makes for an oasis in the sea. The upwelling nutrients of the dome fertilize the tiny plants of the phytoplankton, which feed the tiny animals of the zooplankton, which bring bigger animals, some of which are very big indeed. |
发表于 2009-3-2 14:02
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