評論
打印
Science and technology
科技板塊
Conservation
保護
How to prepare poached eggs
對付偷蛋人
A tracking device may help stop the robbery of turtles' nests
一種追蹤裝置或許可以阻止海龜巢穴被盜
Turtles have a problem. They are delicious. And so are their eggs. That has led to heavy hunting in the past. These days, though, the seven species of marine turtle are protected in most countries. If turtle soup is legally on the menu its source will be a freshwater species such as the North American snapping turtle. But that does not stop the eggs of marine turtles being poached. Which they are, frequently.
烏龜們有一個煩惱：自己太美味，下的蛋也美味。這使得它們在過去遭受了大肆捕殺。目前，雖然有七種海龜已在大多國家的保護之下，但只要菜單上的龜湯合法，那么淡水龜種，比如北美的嚙龜，就將成為原料來源。而這并未阻止海龜蛋繼續被盜，被盜事件依舊頻發。
Such poaching is often ignored by local bobbies. But even if the authorities do wish to clamp down on it, arresting the small-fry who dig the eggs up on beaches where turtles nest will not deal with the problem. That requires finding the trade's organisers. And this can be hard.
這種偷獵行為常被當地警察忽視，但是，即使當局真的想要強行壓制，即便抓捕了那些在海龜筑巢的海灘上挖蛋的“小人物”也于事無補，他們需要找出幕后黑手(交易組織者)，但這十分困難。
To assist the process Kim WilliamsGuillén of Paso Pacifico, an American conservation charity, and Helen Pheasey of the University of Kent, in Britain, have come up with a nifty gadget. It is a globalpositioning-system transmitter enclosed in a plastic shell made by 3D printing. The result looks like a turtle's egg and weighs about the same. Dug up and carried away by poachers, it can lead the police to those poachers' bases of operation.
為了協助這一行動的進行，美國保護慈善組織帕索·太平洋地區的金·威廉斯吉倫和英國肯特大學的海倫·菲西發明了一個精巧的裝置，即一種安裝在由3D打印制作的塑膠蛋殼內的全球定位系統發射機，外形、重量均與海龜蛋無差。一旦這種裝置被偷蛋者挖出來并帶走，警察便可追蹤至偷蛋者的大本營。
As they report this week in Current Biology, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey have now tested their invention in Costa Rica, a place where turtle-egg poaching is rife. They set the printer to mimic the eggs of two species, the green and the olive ridley, which frequent that country's coast-lines, and placed a decoy egg into each of 101 turtle nests on four beaches where poaching is a problem. The decoys were rigged to remain dormant until their shells were exposed to the air. At that moment—presumed to signal the arrival of poachers—the "egg" in question starts broadcasting its location once an hour.
正如本周他們在《當代生物學》上報道的那樣，金·威廉斯吉倫博士和菲西博士已經在哥斯達黎加（海龜蛋被盜盛行之地）對該裝置進行了測試。他們用打印機模擬了兩種海龜蛋——綠蠵龜和橄欖綠蠵龜，這兩種海龜經常出沒于該國的海岸線上。他們在存在偷獵問題的四個海灘上的101個海龜巢穴中各放了一枚假蛋。誘餌蛋被設置成休眠模式，直到蛋殼暴露于空氣之中將其觸發。在那一刻——被認為是偷獵者到來的信號——這只“蛋”便開始每小時播報一次自己的位置。
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