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A woman from Hancock, Maine, discovered that a tourist snapshot of a humpback whale on Flickr matched with photos documented in the Allied Whale research catalogue, providing proof that this whale had traveled 6,000 miles, the longest documented distance of any humpback. Christie Nicholson reports
一位來自美國緬因州漢考克的婦女發現，Flickr上一位游客所拍快照中的座頭鯨 ，與 Allied Whale組織研究目錄上刊登的照片中的座頭鯨完全一樣。這就證明了這條鯨魚已經游了6,000 英里，是目前座頭鯨所留下記錄的游行距離中最長的。Christie Nicholson 報道
Gale McCollough is a school teacher who lives near the small seaside town of Hancock, Maine. From that humble location, she recently made an extraordinary discovery.
Gale McCollough 住在漢考克一個靠近海邊的小村莊里，目前是名教師。在那么一個簡陋的地方，卻讓她有了驚人的發現。
Using the photo-sharing site Flickr and a personal history of studying whale photos, she identified a picture, taken in 2001 by tourist Freddy Johansen in Madagascar, of an Antarctic humpback known to scientists as number 1363. Two years earlier, researchers had spotted 1363, a female, swimming alongside another whale in Brazil. Brazil to Madagascar. That’s a distance of 6,000 miles, nearly double any documented migration by a humpback.
在瀏覽照片分享網站Flickr的時候，她獨自研究了些鯨魚照片的來歷，認出了一張由游客 Freddy Johansen 于2001年攝于馬達加斯加島的照片。照片中正是科學家們所熟知的，編號1363 的南極座頭鯨。兩年前，研究人員發現了1363，這是頭雌性座頭鯨，當時正和另一頭座頭鯨沿著巴西海岸游著。而巴西至馬達加斯加島足足有6,000 英里，幾乎是已知座頭鯨遷徙距離的兩倍。
（圖片提供：Peter Stiveck）譯者注：圖中較大的那只就是1363 Since the late 1970s the Allied Whale research group at the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor has built a catalogue of whale photos. McCollough scoured the catalogue and developed an expertise for identifying humpbacks based on their distinct shape, color and markings.
二十世紀70年代末期以來，巴港大西洋學院的Allied Whale 研究組織已經為鯨魚照片創建了個目錄。McCollough查找了整個目錄，在基于鯨魚們各自截然不同的形狀、顏色、斑紋的基礎上，她培養出了一種辨別座頭鯨的技能。
More recently McCollough searched for “humpback” on Flickr and unlocked an embarrassment of riches. She consolidated the pics into a group, and then in 2009, caught sight of number 1363 in the Johansen photo. The discovery led to her co-authoring a paper published earlier this month in Biology Letters, and earning her the esteemed title of citizen scientist. In the process, she changed our understanding of the humpback whale.
最近以來 McCollough 一直在Flickr上搜索座頭鯨，漸漸打破了這資料豐富卻雜亂的窘境。她曾經把這些照片整理后送給一個組織，然而到了2009年，她就在Johansen的照片里看到了1363。這次發現使她與人合著了篇論文，并于本月早些時候發表在了《生物學快報》雜志上。同時這項發現也為她贏得了“民間科學家”這一深受尊敬的稱號。在此過程中，她改變了我們對座頭鯨原有的認識。
