reap the open ocean harvest把公海当田来收割

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《蓝色星球》拍的就是这片栖息地，我们是在九十年代末拍摄的。 那是……令人震惊的景象：一个完全不为人知的世界，一个自开天辟地便已存在的世界。 各种你压根不知道世上还有的生物， 全都色彩斑斓，全都美得难以置信。 而且它们丝毫没有因为你的出现而受惊扰。 广袤的海洋里，大部分地方近乎空无一物。 但在某些地方，有一些生命热点， 洋流把养分带到海面，引发一场生命的大爆发。 在这些地方，庞大的鱼群聚集在一起。 问题是，我们的渔船队寻找这些生命热点的本事，一点不比鱼差。 船队一旦找到，就能轻而易举地把密集的鱼群捞上来。 直到五十年代，大型船队才第一次驶入国际水域…… 到全球各地的公海去收割渔获。 然而，海中百分之九十的大型鱼类已经被它们捕走了。 起初，它们的网里能捕到大量的鱼。 但仅仅几年后，世界各地的网拉上来就都空了。 渔获很快就少得可怜，各国开始补贴船队，好把这个产业维持下去。 没有大型鱼类和其他海洋掠食者，海洋的养分循环就会卡壳。 掠食者有助于把养分留在阳光照得到的海水里， 把这些养分循环起来，让浮游生物可以反复利用。 没有掠食者，养分就会流失到深海，几百年都回不来， 而这些生命热点便开始萎缩。 海洋开始死去。