中考真题2024福建省阅读理解C篇--海洋探索

中等

说明文

自然

深海勘探困难，但海洋对地球温度、气候及氧气至关重要，我们需更深入地了解海洋。

Though oceans cover about 71 percent of the earth’s surface, there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Only about 20 percent of the seafloor has been mapped, and the remaining 80 percent is still a secret to us. Some scientists even think that 91 percent of sea animals have yet to be discovered.

虽然海洋覆盖了地球表面的 71%，但我们对海洋仍有很多不了解的地方。只有大约 20% 的海底已经绘制了地图，剩下的 80% 对我们来说仍然是个秘密。一些科学家甚至认为，有 91% 的海洋动物尚未被发现。

So why do we know so little about the deep sea? Well, getting to those depths is very difficult and requires high technology that simply didn’t come into being for most of human history. The first navigable submarine (可驾驶的潜水艇), for example, was built in 1620, and it couldn’t go more than five meters below the surface. In fact, for a long time many scientists didn’t even think that there could be any life at depths greater than 550 meters and didn’t see much need to explore (探索) the deep sea. However, this changed in 1862 when life was discovered as far down as 945 meters below sea level with the help of a digging machine. Ten years later, around 4, 700 species (物种) unknown before from the ocean floor were discovered.

那么，为什么我们对深海知之甚少呢？因为进入深海非常困难，需要高科技，而在人类历史的大部分时间里，这些高科技还没有出现。例如，第一艘可驾驶的潜水艇是在 1620 年建造的，但它只能潜入海面下 5 米。事实上，在很长一段时间里，许多科学家甚至认为在深度超过 550 米的地方不可能有生命存在，也不认为有什么必要探索深海。然而，1862 年，在一台挖掘机的帮助下，人们在海平面以下 945 米处发现了生命。10 年后，人们在海底发现了约 4,700 种以前未知的物种。

Since then, high technology has been developed to help explore the deep sea, including satellites. But why is deep-sea exploration still so difficult? Well, at greater depths it is freezing (极冷的), everything is completely dark, and the pressure can be over 1, 000 times greater than that on the surface.

从那时起，包括卫星在内的高科技技术不断发展，帮助人们探索深海。但为什么深海勘探仍然如此困难呢？因为在更深的地方是极冷的，一切都漆黑一片，压力可能是海面上的 1000 多倍。