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| The dugong, a species of so-called sea cow that roams the ocean floor in Asia and Africa and is said to have inspired ancient legends of mermaids, has been spotted off China’s southern coast for centuries. | 儒艮是所谓海牛的一种，在亚洲和非洲的海底游荡，据说是古代美人鱼传说的灵感来源。几个世纪以来，中国南部沿海一直有儒艮出没。 |
| Not lately, though. A new study suggests that the dugong has become the first large vertebrate to go functionally extinct in China’s coastal waters, the result of a rapid population collapse there that began in the mid-1970s. | 不过最近没有了。一项新的研究表明，儒艮已成为中国沿海水域第一种功能性灭绝的大型脊椎动物，这是自上世纪70年代中期开始中国沿海水域儒艮数量急剧下降的结果。 |
| “Functional extinction” means that even if some dugongs are still alive off China’s coast, their numbers are too small to maintain a viable population. Dugongs are occasionally entangled in fishing nets, and the seagrass that they eat in the South China Sea’s northern reaches has degraded over the years. | “功能性灭绝”意味着即使中国沿海仍有一些儒艮存活，其数量也太少，无法维持一个可生存的种群。儒艮偶尔会被渔网缠住，而它们在南海北部水域吃的海草多年来已经退化。 |
| The study in the journal Royal Society Open Science, based on interviews with nearly 800 fishermen in southern China and published online this week, is a cautionary tale for other mammals in the South China Sea — a site of stunning marine biodiversity that faces heavy pressure from overfishing, coastal development and other stresses. | 发表在《皇家学会开放科学》期刊上的这项研究基于对中国南方近800名渔民的采访，于本周在网上发表。该研究为南海的其他哺乳动物敲响了警钟——那里拥有惊人的海洋生物多样性，但面临着过度捕捞、沿海开发和其他的压力。 |
| There are still approximately 100,000 dugongs living in the waters off around 40 countries, but the latest findings do not bode well for other populations of the animal in Japan and Southeast Asia, said Helene Marsh, an emeritus professor of environmental science at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. | 澳大利亚昆士兰州詹姆斯库克大学环境科学荣休教授海伦·马什说，在大约40个国家的水域中，仍然生活着大约10万只儒艮，但最新的发现对日本和东南亚其他种群的儒艮来说不是一个好兆头。 |
| “It’s a sad story,” Professor Marsh said by phone on Friday, adding, “I don’t think it’s going to be the last place where people can conclude that dugongs are functionally extinct.” | “这是一个悲伤的故事，”马什周五在电话中说，并补充说，“我认为这不会是最后一个得出儒艮功能性灭绝结论的地方。” |
| A ‘sobering reminder’ | “严肃的提醒” |
| Marine mammals, including dugongs, first evolved in the Eocene Epoch, around 54 million to 34 million years ago, particularly in the extensive shallow sea stretching from the Pacific to the present-day Mediterranean, according to research by Annalisa Berta, a professor emerita of biology at San Diego State University. | 根据圣地亚哥州立大学生物学荣休教授安娜丽莎·贝尔塔的研究，包括儒艮在内的海洋哺乳动物最早是在约5400万至3400万年前的始新世进化的，尤其是在从太平洋一直延伸到今天的地中海的广阔浅海中。 |
| Dugongs belong to the Sirenia, a biological order that includes the dugong and three extant species of manatees. All four are known colloquially as “sea cows,” but the dugong is the only one that lives exclusively in salt water. It is also the world’s only fully vegetarian marine mammal. | 儒艮所属的海牛目包括儒艮和其他三种现存的海牛。这四种动物俗称都是“海牛”，但儒艮是唯一只生活在咸水里的动物。它也是世界上唯一一种完全食草的海洋哺乳动物。 |
| Over the centuries, sirenians have inspired tales of mermaids and other mystical creatures. Ms. Marsh said many of the legends are based around the idea that sirenians, like the sirens of Homer’s “Odyssey,” lure sailors with magical properties. (The shallow, prehistoric body of water where dugongs developed, the Tethys Sea, was named after a sea goddess from Greek mythology.) | 几个世纪以来，海牛目动物激发了关于美人鱼和其他神秘生物的故事。马什说，许多传说都是基于这样一个想法：海牛目动物就像荷马的《奥德赛》中的海妖一样，可以用魔法吸引水手。（儒艮生长的史前浅水域特提斯海得名于希腊神话中的一位海神。） |
| Dugongs once had an even larger range that stretched to the Western Atlantic and Caribbean, and there used to be several dugong species. One of them, Steller’s sea cow, was a source of food for 18th-century hunters and explorers in the North Pacific, but it was declared extinct 27 years after its discovery in 1768. | 儒艮分布的范围曾经更广，一直延伸到西大西洋和加勒比海，而且曾经有过几个儒艮物种。其中的斯特勒海牛是18世纪北太平洋的猎人和探险家的食物来源，但它在1768年被发现后27年被宣布灭绝。 |
| Australia has the world’s largest population of dugongs today, primarily thanks to an enormous, sparsely populated coast ringed with abundant seagrass, Professor Marsh said. The population off southern China was never particularly robust because there wasn’t as much seagrass there in the first place, she added. | 马什说，目前澳大利亚拥有世界上最大的儒艮种群，这主要归功于该国广阔而人烟稀少的海岸，周围环绕着丰富的海草。她还说，中国南部海域的儒艮种群从来就不是特别大，因为那里本来就没有那么多海草。 |
| Now the dugong may be gone from China’s coast forever, joining the Yangtze River dolphin and other species that have disappeared from the country’s rivers and seas. The recent study described the rapid collapse of China’s dugong population since 1975 as a “sobering reminder that local extinction can happen within a very short time.” | 如今，儒艮可能会从中国海岸永远消失，加入长江江豚和其他在中国河流和海洋中消失的物种行列。最近这项研究称，自1975年以来中国儒艮数量的迅速减少是“一个严肃的提醒，局部物种灭绝可能在很短的时间内发生”。 |
| A ‘dangerous decline’ | “危险的衰退” |
| The study, by researchers at institutions in China, Greece and Britain, is based on interviews conducted in the summer of 2019 with 788 fishermen along the southern China coastline. Only three reported dugong sightings over the preceding five years. | 该研究由中国、希腊和英国研究机构的研究人员进行，基于2019年夏天对中国南部沿海788名渔民的采访。在过去的五年里，只有三次报告说看到了儒艮的踪迹。 |
| The authors also analyzed dugong records for China, which showed that 257 dugongs had been hunted there for food between 1958 and 1976. By contrast, there were no verified field observations of dugongs in China after the year 2000. | 作者们还分析了中国的儒艮记录，显示在1958年至1976年间，有257只儒艮在中国被猎杀作为食物。相比之下，2000年以后，中国就没有经核实的儒艮实地观察。 |
| It is possible that a “remnant” population of dugongs has survived off the country’s southern coast, but continuing degradation of seagrass and other coastal resources in the South China Sea makes the prospect of a population recovery unlikely, the authors wrote. | 作者写道，儒艮的“残余”种群有可能在中国南部沿海存活下来，但是南海的海草和其他沿海资源的持续退化使得儒艮种群恢复的可能性不大。 |
| One of the authors, Songhai Li at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering in China, referred questions to Samuel Turvey, a co-author based at the Zoological Society of London. He did not respond to a request for comment. | 该研究的作者之一、中国科学院深海科学与工程研究所的李松海建议记者向共同作者之一、伦敦动物学会的塞缪尔·特维提问。他没有回复记者的置评请求。 |
| Harris Heng Wei Khang, a marine ecologist in Malaysia who has studied dugongs, said that the study was limited because it relied to a large extent on interviews, in which sources could potentially misidentify a marine mammal. “It’s certainly better to accompany it with available direct evidence of the species’ absence,” he said. | 研究儒艮的马来西亚海洋生态学家哈里斯·恒伟康（音）说，这项研究是有限的，因为它在很大程度上依赖于采访，在采访中，信息来源可能会错误地识别海洋哺乳动物。他说：“配合已有的关于该物种之少见的直接证据无疑会更好。” |
| But Professor Marsh, a co-chairwoman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Sirenian Specialist Group, said she saw no problems with the study’s methodology. “There may be a very low number of animals there that nobody’s seen for a while; that’s quite possible,” she said. “But I think their conclusions are quite robust.” | 但身为国际自然保护联盟海牛目动物专家组联合主席的马什说，她认为这项研究的方法没有问题。“也许是有少量的存在，只是很长时间没有被看到；这很有可能，”她说。“但我认为他们的结论相当有力。” |
| In 2015, the group classified dugongs as vulnerable to extinction, but the latest study highlights how the health of the population varies from region to region, said Gabriel Grimsditch, the program management officer for dugongs at the United Nations Environment Program. | 联合国环境规划署儒艮项目管理官员加布里埃尔·格里姆斯迪奇说，2015年，该组织将儒艮列为濒危物种，但最新的研究突显出不同地区的儒艮种群健康状况存在差异。 |
| Relatively healthy populations can still be found in Australia and the Persian Gulf, Mr. Grimsditch wrote in an email from Abu Dhabi. “However, outside of these two regions most dugong populations are in dangerous decline, and the study from China highlights the extinction threat they face across their range,” he said. | 格里姆斯迪奇从阿布扎比发来的电子邮件中写道，在澳大利亚和波斯湾仍然可以找到相对健康的儒艮种群。“然而，在这两个地区之外，大多数儒艮种群正处于危险的衰退中，来自中国的研究强调了它们在整体上面临的灭绝威胁，”他说。 |
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