论文部分内容阅读
When musician and naturalist Bernie Krause drops his microphones into the pristine coral reef waters of Fiji， he picks up a raucous mix of sighs， beats， glissandos， cries， groans， grunts， hits and clicks.
The water pulsates with the sound of creatures vying for acoustic bandwidth. He hears crustaceans， parrot fish， anemones， wrasses， sharks， shrimps， puffers and surgeonfish. Some gnash their teeth， others use their bladders or tails to make sound. Sea anemones grunt and belch. Every creature on the reef makes its own sound.
But half a mile away， where the same reef is badly damaged， he can only pick up the sound of waves and a few snapping shrimp. It is， he says， the desolate sound of extinction.
Krause has spent 40 years recording over 15，000 species， collecting 4，500 hours of sound from many of the world’s pristine habitats.
But such is the rate of species extinction and the deterioration of these pristine habitats that he estimates half his recordings are now archives， impossible to repeat because the habitats no longer exist or they have been so compromised by human noise. His tapes are possibly the only record of the original diversity of life in these places.
“A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening，” he writes in a new book， The Great Animal Orchestra. “Little by little the vast orchestra of life， the chorus of the natural world， is in the process of being quieted. There has been a massive decrease in the density and diversity of key vocal creatures， both large and small. The sense of desolation extends beyond mere silence.”
Hawaii， he says， is the extinction capital of the world.“In a couple of centuries since the islands were populated by Europeans， half the 140 bird species have disappeared. In Madagascar， 15 species of lemur， an elephant bird， a pygmy hippo and an estimated half of all the animals have gone extinct.”
Even partially disturbed habitats lose much of their life for many years， says Krause. Recordings of a meadow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of San Francisco before the surrounding forest was selectively logged in the 1980s， sounds very different to when Krause returned a year later.
“The overall richness of sound was gone， as was the thriving density and diversity of birds. The only prominent sounds were the stream and the hammering of a Williamson’s sapsucker. Over the past 20 years I have returned a dozen times to the same spot at the same time of year， but the bio-acoustic vitality I had captured before logging has not yet returned.”
The water pulsates with the sound of creatures vying for acoustic bandwidth. He hears crustaceans， parrot fish， anemones， wrasses， sharks， shrimps， puffers and surgeonfish. Some gnash their teeth， others use their bladders or tails to make sound. Sea anemones grunt and belch. Every creature on the reef makes its own sound.
But half a mile away， where the same reef is badly damaged， he can only pick up the sound of waves and a few snapping shrimp. It is， he says， the desolate sound of extinction.
Krause has spent 40 years recording over 15，000 species， collecting 4，500 hours of sound from many of the world’s pristine habitats.
But such is the rate of species extinction and the deterioration of these pristine habitats that he estimates half his recordings are now archives， impossible to repeat because the habitats no longer exist or they have been so compromised by human noise. His tapes are possibly the only record of the original diversity of life in these places.
“A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening，” he writes in a new book， The Great Animal Orchestra. “Little by little the vast orchestra of life， the chorus of the natural world， is in the process of being quieted. There has been a massive decrease in the density and diversity of key vocal creatures， both large and small. The sense of desolation extends beyond mere silence.”
Hawaii， he says， is the extinction capital of the world.“In a couple of centuries since the islands were populated by Europeans， half the 140 bird species have disappeared. In Madagascar， 15 species of lemur， an elephant bird， a pygmy hippo and an estimated half of all the animals have gone extinct.”
Even partially disturbed habitats lose much of their life for many years， says Krause. Recordings of a meadow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of San Francisco before the surrounding forest was selectively logged in the 1980s， sounds very different to when Krause returned a year later.
“The overall richness of sound was gone， as was the thriving density and diversity of birds. The only prominent sounds were the stream and the hammering of a Williamson’s sapsucker. Over the past 20 years I have returned a dozen times to the same spot at the same time of year， but the bio-acoustic vitality I had captured before logging has not yet returned.”