reap the open ocean harvest把公海當田來收割

This habitat was the subject of the series The Blue Planet, which we were filming in the late '90s. It was... an astonishing vision of a completely unknown world, a world that had existed since the beginning of time. All sorts of things that you had no idea had ever existed, all in a multitude of colors, all unbelievably beautiful. And all of them completely undisturbed by your presence. For much of its expanse, the ocean is largely empty. But in certain places, there are hot spots where currents bring nutrients to the surface and trigger an explosion of life. In such places, huge shoals of fish gather. The problem is that our fishing fleets are just as good at finding those hot spots as are the fish. When they do, they're able to gather the concentrated shoals with ease. It was only in the '50s that large fleets first ventured out into international waters... to reap the open ocean harvest across the globe. Yet, they've removed 90% of the large fish in the sea. At first, they caught plenty of fish in their nets. But within only a few years, the nets across the globe were coming in empty. The fishing quickly became so poor that countries began to subsidize the fleets to maintain the industry. Without large fish and other marine predators, the oceanic nutrient cycle stutters. The predators help to keep nutrients in the ocean's sunlit waters, recycling them so that they can be used again and again by plankton. Without predators, nutrients are lost for centuries to the depths and the hot spots start to diminish. The ocean starts to die.

系列片《藍色星球》拍的就是這片棲息地，我們是在九十年代末拍攝的。 那是……令人震驚的景象：一個完全不為人知的世界，一個自開天闢地便已存在的世界。 各種你壓根不知道世上還有的生物， 全都色彩斑斕，全都美得難以置信。 而且它們絲毫沒有因為你的出現而受驚擾。 廣袤的海洋裡，大部分地方近乎空無一物。 但在某些地方，有一些生命熱點， 洋流把養分帶到海面，引發一場生命的大爆發。 在這些地方，龐大的魚群聚集在一起。 問題是，我們的漁船隊尋找這些生命熱點的本事，一點不比魚差。 船隊一旦找到，就能輕而易舉地把密集的魚群撈上來。 直到五十年代，大型船隊才第一次駛入國際水域…… 到全球各地的公海去收割漁獲。 然而，海中百分之九十的大型魚類已經被它們捕走了。 起初，它們的網裡能捕到大量的魚。 但僅僅幾年後，世界各地的網拉上來就都空了。 漁獲很快就少得可憐，各國開始補貼船隊，好把這個產業維持下去。 沒有大型魚類和其他海洋掠食者，海洋的養分迴圈就會卡殼。 掠食者有助於把養分留在陽光照得到的海水裡， 把這些養分迴圈起來，讓浮游生物可以反覆利用。 沒有掠食者，養分就會流失到深海，幾百年都回不來， 而這些生命熱點便開始萎縮。 海洋開始死去。