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Turtles have an unfortunate habit of devouring plastic objects floating in the sea. These then get snared in their alimentary canals, cannot be broken down by the animals' digestiveenzymes and may ultimately kill them.
海龜有一個壞習慣，就是吞食漂浮在海里的塑料製品。然後這些東西會陷入消化道，無法被動物的消化酶分解，並最終可能致死。
It is widely assumed that this penchant for plastics is a matter of mistaken identity. Drifting plastic bags, for instance, look similar to jellyfish, which many types of turtles love to eat.
人們普遍認為，這種對塑料的嗜好是一種錯誤的識別。例如，漂浮的塑料袋看起來就像許多海龜喜歡吃的水母。
Yet lots of plastic objects that end up inside turtles have no resemblance to jellyfish. Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida therefore suspects that something more complicated is going on.
然而，海龜體內的許多塑料製品卻與水母毫無相似之處。 因此，佛羅里達大學的Joseph Pfaller懷疑，更復雜的事情正在發生。
As he writes in Current Biology, he thinks that the odour of marine micro-organisms which colonise floating plastic objects induces turtles to feed. The idea that the smell of plastic flotsam might lure animals to their doom first emerged in2016.
他在《Current Biology》中寫道，海洋微生物附著在漂浮的塑料物體上，它們的氣味誘使海龜進食。塑料垃圾的氣味可能會導致動物滅亡的想法最早出現在2016年。
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, noticed that certain chemicals, notably dimethyl sulphide, which are released into the air by micro-organism-colonised plastics, are those which many seabirds sniff to track down food.
加州大學戴維斯分校的研究人員注意到，某些化學物質， 尤其是被微生物佔領的塑料釋放到空氣中的二甲基硫化物，是許多海鳥用來尋找食物的。
These chemicals mark good places to hunt because they indicate an abundance of the algae and bacteria that lie at the bottom of marine food chains. The researchers also found that birds which pursue their food in this way are five or six times more likely to eat plastic than those which do not.
這些化學物質標記了捕食的好地方，因為它們表明在海洋食物鏈的底部 有大量的藻類和細菌。研究人員還發現， 以這種方式捕食的鳥類比不以這種方式捕食的鳥類吃塑料製品的可能性要大5到6倍。
Since turtles are known to break the surface periodically and sniff the air when navigating towards their feeding areas, Dr Pfaller theorised that they are following these same chemicals, and are likewise fooled into thinking that floating plastic objects are edible.
眾所周知，海龜在遊向覓食區域時，會週期性地破開水面，並嗅空氣中的氣味。 因此，Pfaller博士推斷，海龜也在遵循著這些相同的化學物質，而且同樣會誤以為漂浮的塑料物體是可以食用的
。To test that idea, he and his colleagues set up an experiment involving loggerhead turtles, a species frequently killed by plastic. They arranged for 15 of the animals, each around five months old, to be exposed, in random order, to four odours delivered through a pipe to the air above an experimental arena.
為了驗證這個想法，他和他的同事們做了一個實驗，實驗對象是經常被塑料殺死的紅海龜。他們安排了15只動物，每隻大約5個月大，按照隨機的順序，讓它們聞四種氣味，這些氣味通過管道輸送到實驗場地上方的空氣中。
The odours were: the vapour from deionised water; the smell of turtle-feeding pellets made of shrimp and fish meal; the smell of a clean plastic bottle chopped up into ten pieces;and the smell of a similarly chopped bottle that had been kept in the ocean for five weeks to allow algae and bacteria to grow on it. Two of the smells proved far more attractive to the animals than the others.
這四種氣味是：去離子水的蒸汽；由蝦和魚粉製成的喂海龜的小丸的味道 一個被切成10塊的乾淨的塑料瓶的味道； 以及類似被切塊的瓶子的味道，這個瓶子在海洋裡漂了五週，上邊長滿了海藻和細菌。事實證明，其中兩種氣味對動物的吸引力要比其他氣味大得多。
When sniffing both the odour of food pellets and that of five-week-old bottles turtles kept their nostrils out of the water more than three times as long, and took twice as many breaths as they did when what was on offer was the smell of freshbottle-plastic or deionised-water vapour.
當海龜聞食物顆粒的氣味和那個五週瓶子的氣味時， 它們鼻子離水時間是聞到新鮮塑料瓶或去離子水蒸汽氣味時的三倍，呼吸的次數是聞到新鮮塑料瓶或去離子水蒸汽氣味時的兩倍。
On the face of it, then, the turtles were responding to the smell of old bottles as if it were the smell of food. Though they have not yet tested whether dimethyl sulphide is the culprit, Dr Pfaller and his colleagues think it is the most likely candidate.
從表面上看，海龜對舊瓶子的氣味的反應就像聞到食物的氣味一樣。儘管他們還沒有測試過是否二甲基硫化物是罪魁禍首
， 但Pfaller博士和他的同事認為它是最有可能的候選者。In an unpolluted ocean, pretty well anything which had this smell would be edible—or, at least, harmless. Unfortunately, five-week-old plastic bottles and their like are not.
在一個沒有汙染的海洋裡，任何有這種氣味的東西都是可以食用的——或者至少是無害的。 不幸的是，漂浮五週的塑料瓶和類似的東西卻不是。
重點單詞：
devour [dɪˈvaʊər] (尤指因飢餓而) 狼吞虎嚥地吃光; 津津有味地看
edible [ˈedəbl] adj.適宜食用的; (無毒而) 可以吃的 n.食物
culprit [ˈkʌlprɪt] n.犯錯的人; 罪犯; 肇事者; 引起問題的事物
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