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Few things exercise green sensibilities more these days than marine plastic litter.
如今沒有什么能像海洋塑料垃圾那樣更能喚醒人們的環保意識。
The detritus looks unsightly when it washes up on beaches, and cruel when it chokes photogenic sea creatures.
這些垃圾被沖到沙灘上時的畫面很不雅觀，海洋生物被垃圾卡住的照片讓人覺得不忍。
Scientists estimate that perhaps 8m tonnes of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, discharged by rivers or shed from ships.
科學家認為每年約有8百萬公噸塑料垃圾流入海洋，這些垃圾來自河流或船只。
Plenty stays close to shore. Some, though, is carried by currents to mid-ocean gyres.
大量的垃圾堆積在海岸附近。一些垃圾在水流的作用下流入海洋中部環流。
The biggest of these is located halfway between California and Hawaii—
其中最大的環流位于加利福尼亞和夏威夷之間—
and so littered with flotsam that it has been nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
由于四處飄散的垃圾，這片區域被稱為太平洋垃圾帶。
A study published last March in Scientific Reports by Laurent LeBreton of the Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch charity, and colleagues,
去年3月，荷蘭慈善機構Ocean Cleanup的Laurent LeBreton和同事在《科學報告》中發表的研究發現
found that it contains between 45,000 and 129,000 tonnes of plastic debris spread over an area roughly the size of Alaska.
這片區域有45,000至129,000公噸的塑料垃圾，漂浮面積與阿拉斯加州面積相當。
The idea of sweeping it all up might sound fanciful. To Boyan Slat it seemed merely ambitious.
清除所有垃圾的想法或許聽起來不可思議。對博揚·斯拉特而言，他對這個想法雄心勃勃。
What if, he wondered in 2012 (then aged 18), you could build a massive bow-shaped floating barrier,
2012年的時候（當時他18歲），他就想可不可以建造一個大型弓狀浮動擋板
anchor it to the seabed and let currents shuffle the litter into the scoop?
將它拋到海底并讓海流將垃圾沖到凹槽里。
Despite his youthful age and madcap scheme, Mr Slat set up the Ocean Cleanup to put it into practice.
雖然他年紀小且他的計劃很狂妄，但是斯拉特成立了Ocean Cleanup將想法變成了現實。
Six years, 20m euros ($23m) and several prototypes later, the device set sail from San Francisco on September 8th,
6年時間里，在投入了2千萬歐元（2300萬美元）并建造了幾個模型后，該設備最終于9月8日，
escorted by a Coast Guard vessel, a shipload of camera crews and a flotilla of curious boaters.
在一艘緝私船、攝制組以及好奇船客組成的小艦隊的護送下，從舊金山起航。
System 001, as the contraption has been christened, is a hollow cylinder 600 metres long and 1.2 metres in diameter, itself made of plastic (polyethylene).
由于該設備設計精巧所以起名為System 001。System 001是一個空心圓柱體，長600米，直徑1.2米，本身由塑料（聚乙烯）制成。
It was moulded together into a seamless whole from 12-metre segments at a shipyard across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland.
該設備由12米長的斷面鑄成一個無接縫的整體，建造地是一家船廠橫跨奧克蘭舊金山灣。
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