鲨鱼研究人员通过用于识别恒星形状的系统来识别带有斑点的鲸鲨。

播音：安妮·斯尼德（Annie Sneed）

翻译：张朵儿

校对：张艺箫

It’s called the whale shark. And, as the name implies, it’s huge. In fact, it’s the largest living fish in the world. But there’s still much unknown about this big animal.

这种鱼叫鲸鲨。顾名思义，它是一种巨大的生物。事实上，这是世界上现存的最大的鱼。但是，它还有许多未解之谜。

"They’re very enigmatic in the sense that they’re elusive, very difficult to catch up with.” Alistair Dove, an expert on the biology of whale sharks and vice president of research and conservation at Georgia Aquarium.

“他们非常神秘，难以捉摸，而且很难被找到。”鲸鲨生物学专家，佐治亚州水族馆研究与保护副总裁阿利斯泰尔·达夫（Alistair Dove）说道。

But citizen scientists are helping Dove and other whale shark experts get a fuller picture of this marine creature. Tourists, residents and professional scientists have documented the fish for an online database, called the Wildbook for Whale Sharks. By taking advantage of each shark’s individual pattern of skin spots.

但是，公众科学参与者在帮助达夫和其他鲸鲨专家更全面地了解这种海洋生物。一个叫做Wildbook的网络数据库在游客、居民和专家之间建立了联系。这个数据库可以利用鲸鲨身上独特的斑点来确定其身份。

“The Wildbook architecture was really the brainchild of Zaven Arzoumanian and Jason Holmberg…and they adapted an algorithm that was used by the Hubble telescope for recognizing patterns in star field photographs from astrophotography and realized that the spots on a whale shark are really very much the same idea. That whether we can identify individual whale sharks by their spot patterns. And with the help of whale shark scientists like Brad Normal, who is the lead author on this study, they were able to bring that into a citizen-science format that allowed people to upload photographs and use these powerful computer algorithms to recognize individual whale sharks.

“The Wildbook数据库是扎文·阿祖马尼安（Zaven Arzoumanian） 和贾森·霍姆伯格（Jason Holmberg）两人智慧的结晶。他们借鉴了哈勃望远镜用于识别恒星形状的算法，发现鲸鲨身上的斑点也可以做相似的处理。这样就可以通过斑点来标定每条鲸鲨。在项目的领头人，鲸鲨专家布拉德·诺马尔（Brad Normal）的帮助下，这将被做成一项公众科学项目。强大的算法会对民众上传的照片进行识别。”

“And at that point, sharks stopped being random animals that you meet in the ocean and they become individuals with stories and histories and futures that are yet to be written. And that’s what makes it so seductive as a citizen-science project.”

“这样一来，鲸鲨不再是随机出现在海洋某个地方的动物，因为它们也有还未被发现的故事、历史和特征，只是。所以这就是公众科学所吸引人的地方。

Whale shark watchers simply snap a photo of the skin pattern on one side of the fish—preferably the left side, says Dove. “And then you upload a picture of that animal to the Wildbook Web site, and the people on the back end will…tell you whether that animal has ever been seen anywhere before. And that’s very exciting. And it’s kind of a win-win prospect. Because if the animal’s never been seen before then you’ve added a new animal to the database and that’s exciting. If the animal has been seen before then you get to know its story and know where it’s been and when. And that’s exciting too. So it’s great fun for scientists and it’s great fun for tourists alike.”

看到鲸鲨的人只需要拍摄一张鲨鱼一侧的皮肤图案——最好是左侧，达夫说到。“你把照片上传到Wildbook网站上，接着网站就会告诉你这条鲸鲨是否去过其他地方。这是一件非常有趣且对双方都有利的事情。如果这条鲸鲨从未被发现过，那你就为数据库增加了一条数据；如果已经有了记录，那你就能知道关于这条鲸鲨的所有故事，包括什么时候曾经去了哪里。这些都很有趣，所以很受到科学家和游客们欢迎。”

All told, the Wildbook database now has over 5,000 citizen-science contributors, around 30,000 whale shark encounters covering 54 countries, and more than 6,000 individual whale sharks identified. In the latest study using that data, researchers report that the number of known sites where whale sharks gather has risen from 13 to 20. “By all working together and putting our data into a common pot…we get a global picture about where whale sharks are and what they’re doing.” The study is in the journal BioScience. [Bradley M. Norman et al., Undersea Constellations: The Global Biology of an Endangered Marine Megavertebrate Further Informed through Citizen Science]

至今，Wildbook数据库已经有超过5,000名参与者，超过30,000条遍布54个国家鲸鲨的数据，而且鉴定了超过6,000条鲸鲨的身份。在使用这些数据的最新研究中，研究人员表示，鲸鲨已知的聚集地点从13处增加到了20处。“在所有人的共同努力以及汇集数据之后，我们得到了鲸鲨的活动分布图。”研究成果发布在《生物学》（BioScience）杂志上。

The new information may lead to better conservation strategies. “The species is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, which means that the population is declining, and that’s cause for significant concern. So this is a species we should all be paying attention to as a bellwether of what might be expected for big animals that live in the ocean.”

最新的研究将为生态保护策略提供更有效的参考。“这个物种已被列入国际自然保护联盟濒危物种红色名录，这就意味着物种数量的下降，必须得到足够的重视。而这也是动物保护的一个警钟，呼吁我们重视海洋中其他的大型生物。”