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Inaccessible island is well named. It is an uninhabited rock in the South Atlantic ocean that belongs to Tristan da Cunha,
伊納克塞瑟布爾島，這個名字起得很好。這是一座位于南大西洋的杳無人煙的島嶼，
a British dependency which itself vies with Easter Island for the honour of being the most remote inhabited place on the planet.
地屬英國海外領地的特里斯坦-達庫尼亞群島。該島嶼在與復活節島爭奪地球上最偏遠最無人煙之地的榮譽。
Go there, though, and you will find its coast is covered with litter.
但去那里，你會發現其海岸到處都是垃圾。
That, at least, has been the experience of Peter Ryan of the University of Cape Town, in South Africa.
至少這是南非開普敦大學的皮特·瑞恩的經歷。
Since 1984 Dr Ryan, an ornithologist, has been visiting Inaccessible and, along with his other studies,
自1984年以來，鳥類學家瑞恩博士一直拜訪伊納克塞瑟布爾島，結合他的其他研究，
recording the litter stranded on the island's beaches.
記錄下了擱淺在這座島嶼海灘上的垃圾。
This week, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he has published the results.
本周，他在《Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences》上發表了自己的成果。
Though Inaccessible is indeed remote, being near the South Atlantic's midpoint,
雖然伊納克塞瑟布爾島確實很偏遠，臨近南大西洋的中心，
the nature of oceanic circulation means that this is exactly the sort of place where floating rubbish tends to accumulate—
但海洋環流的性質意味著這里正是漂浮垃圾易于堆積的地方—
at the centre of whirlpools thousands of kilometres across, called gyres.
在直徑數千公里的漩渦中心，即環流圈。
Dr Ryan's particular interest was where all the litter came from before it was swept into the gyre.
讓瑞恩特別感興趣的是，在被卷入環流圈前，所有這些垃圾都是來自何處。
And he found that this has changed a lot over the decades he has been visiting the island.
并且他發現在過去的幾十年里，情況已經發生了很大的變化。
To impose some order on the question, he and his colleagues focused on one particular class of litter: bottles.
為了給這個問題設定一些規則，他和他的同事專注于某一些類型的垃圾：瓶子。
Their definition of a bottle included jars and aerosol containers, and encompassed things made of metal, glass or polymer.
他們對瓶子的定義包括罐子和噴霧劑容器以及金屬、玻璃或聚合物制品。
Most, though, were of polyethylene terephthalate, a light plastic, and had once held drinks.
不過大部分都是聚對苯二甲酸乙二醇酯，一種輕巧的塑料且曾用來裝過飲料。
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