有一只白鳍豚。

它被救的时候，背部被人戳了两个大洞，化脓发臭。

那是一头之后在饲养过程中，

不小心咬到饲养员的手指都会赶紧张嘴的白鳍豚。

There was a Yangtze River dolphin, Lipotes vexillifer.

When it was rescued, its back was slashed with two big holes, they were infected and seeping with stinky pus.

The Lipotes vexillifer was careful to not  bite the breeder's finger during the feeding process .

它与人类相处了二十二年，

2002年以后，世间再无白鳍豚。

He lived with humans for twenty-two years before his death.

After 2002, there were no more Lipotes vexillifer in this world.

之前人们捕捞江豚就是等它们一群到浅海里，

用鱼叉，用滚钩一条条叉死。

就算逃跑了，也会伤口感染腐烂致死。

这种血染江河的方式还不算太狠。

因为捕杀鲸鱼的人是用特殊鱼叉射入，

让鱼叉爆炸，炸得血肉横飞，使其组织毁坏而痛苦死去。

People used to catch finless porpoises just waiting for them to go to the shallow sea.

The used a harpoon and a hook to slash them.

Even if they escape, the wound will rot and the porpoise would die.

This way of blood-dyed rivers is not too cruel.

because the whaler uses a special harpoon,

the harpoon explodes, and the whale’s flesh and blood will fly,

 causing massive tissue damage, and death.

“从地质时代的角度来看，

地球上最丰富的生物群已经进入第六次大规模灭绝事件。

比如，保守地说，在过去100年中，

近200种脊椎动物已经灭绝。

这些代表每年约2种的损失。”

“From the perspective of geological time, Earth’s richest biota ever is already well into a sixth mass extinction episode. For example, conservatively almost 200 species of vertebrates have gone extinct in the last 100 y. These represent the loss of about 2 species per year. ”

物种灭绝的严重性在于

这些伤害，这种损失不可逆转。

没有反悔和弥补的机会。

“Species extinctions are obviously very important in the long run, because such losses are irreversible .”

We have no chance to recover and make up for it.

现在，世界海洋的表层含有超过5万亿个东西，

不是生物，是微塑料。

目前已知有超过200种物种因摄入塑料而受到威胁。

Currently, the surface of the world’s oceans contains more than 5 trillion things.

But these things are not alive, they are pieces of microplastic.

More than 200 species are currently known to be threatened by plastic ingestion.

“自20世纪50年代开始大规模生产以来，

塑料的年产量从1954年的170万吨增加到2014年的3.11亿吨。”

“since the beginning of its mass manufacture in the 1950s, the annual production of plastic has increased from 1.7 million tons in 1954 to 311 million tons in 2014 .”

这是2017年的论文里的数据，

不知道如今是怎样庞大的数，

未来的就更不得而知了。

This is the data in the 2017 paper.

I don’t know how big the number is today, and the future is even more unknown.

人类寻找的一些塑料的终点或移除机制在偏远岛屿，

这些岛已成为世界废物的储存库。

“The end point, or removal mechanism, for some of this plastic likely includes remote islands, which have become reservoirs for the world’s waste. ”

而自然生成的“太平洋垃圾补丁”的面积预估超过160万平方千米。

重量超过87000吨。

什么是“海洋补丁”？

说得直接点就是“垃圾漩涡”，

有着浓度异常高的塑料、化学污物垃圾，基本都是肉眼看不见的微小碎片。

The naturally generated "Pacific Waste Patch" is estimated to have an area of more than 1.6 million square kilometers. The weight exceeds 87,000 tons.

What is a "marine patch"?

The direct point is the “garbage whirlpool”, which has abnormally high concentrations of plastic and chemical waste, which are basically tiny fragments that are invisible to the naked eye.

至于“密度异常高”到底是多高？

相当于地球上每一个人都去捡250片塑料，

才能捡完那1.8万亿片的垃圾。

塑料废物现在已经无处不在，

它被认为是拟议的人类世时代的地质指标。

How high is "high density”?

It is equivalent to everybody on the planet going to smash 250 pieces of plastic to create the 1.8 trillion pieces of garbage.

“Plastic waste is now so ubiquitous in the environment that it has been suggested as a geological indicator of the proposed ‘Anthropocene’ era .”

人类这个群体在地球上，确实是尽占优势，

于是我们经常会忘了我们在征服和掠夺自然的同时会和多少生命扯上关系。

站在食物链顶端一遍遍说着“适者生存”，

可是，

没有了多样性的冰冷世界和绝对胜利意义何在。

The human group is indeed very successful on earth.

So we often forget how much life we are connected to while conquering and plundering nature.

Standing at the top of the food chain, we said "the survival of the fittest" over and over again.

But,I don't know what the significance is of an icy world without  diversity and absolute victory.

我们是35亿年地球生命史里的一万年的短暂驻足，

是十万光年银河系广阔天地里的渺小存在，

是孤独星球，也是宇宙尘埃。

We are a short-lived stop of 10,000 years in the 3.5 billion year life history of the Earth.

We are a small existence in the vast world of the Milky Way galaxy in 100,000 light years.

And we just a lonely planet and cosmic dust.

“人类是地球的癌细胞。”——《黑客帝国》

"Human beings are the cancer cells of the earth." 

——The Matrix

参考文献  references：

Exceptional and rapid accumulation of anthropogenic debris on one of the world’s most remote and pristine islands 

Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines