Rose George: Inside the secret shipping industry

257,646 views ・ 2013-12-13

TED


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譯者: Chingwen Kao 審譯者: Coco Shen
00:12
A couple of years ago,
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幾年前,
00:14
Harvard Business School chose
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哈佛商學院把該年度
00:16
the best business model of that year.
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最佳商業模式
00:18
It chose Somali piracy.
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選給了索馬利亞海盜。
00:23
Pretty much around the same time,
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差不多在那時候,
00:25
I discovered that there were 544 seafarers
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我看到544名船員
00:31
being held hostage on ships,
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遭劫船做為人質,
00:34
often anchored just off the Somali coast
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這些被挾持的船往往就大喇喇的
00:36
in plain sight.
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停靠在索馬利亞海岸外。
00:39
And I learned these two facts, and I thought,
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這兩件事讓我思考:
00:41
what's going on in shipping?
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海運業出了什麼問題?
00:44
And I thought, would that happen in any other industry?
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這種狀況有沒有可能發生在其它產業?
00:46
Would we see 544 airline pilots
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我們有沒有可能看到
00:50
held captive in their jumbo jets
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544名機師被挾持在飛機裡
00:51
on a runway for months, or a year?
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遭囚禁長達數個月或一年?
00:55
Would we see 544 Greyhound bus drivers?
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或者是544名灰狗巴士司機?
00:59
It wouldn't happen.
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根本不可能!
01:00
So I started to get intrigued.
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這問題讓我著迷。
01:03
And I discovered another fact,
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隨後我發現另一個
01:06
which to me was more astonishing
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更令我訝異的事實,
01:08
almost for the fact that I hadn't known it before
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而我訝異的點在於竟然活到了42、43歲
01:11
at the age of 42, 43.
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才得知這個事實:
01:13
That is how fundamentally we still depend on shipping.
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我們仍極度依賴海運。
01:19
Because perhaps the general public
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這也許是因為一般普羅大眾
01:21
thinks of shipping as an old-fashioned industry,
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認為海運已經過時了,以為海運就是
01:24
something brought by sailboat
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貨物透過亞哈(出自白鯨記)
01:27
with Moby Dicks and Jack Sparrows.
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與史傑克(出自神鬼奇航)來做運輸。
01:30
But shipping isn't that.
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事實並不然。
01:32
Shipping is as crucial to us as it has ever been.
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海運對我們的重要性日益加深,
01:37
Shipping brings us 90 percent of world trade.
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它包辦了全球百分之九十的貿易物流,
01:42
Shipping has quadrupled in size since 1970.
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運輸量從1970年起成長了四倍,
01:46
We are more dependent on it now than ever.
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我們對海運的依賴更甚以往。
01:49
And yet, for such an enormous industry --
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但即便有十萬艘商船正在海上航行,
01:53
there are a 100,000 working vessels on the sea —
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這麼龐大的產業
01:56
it's become pretty much invisible.
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卻像隱形似的。
02:00
Now that sounds absurd in Singapore to say that,
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當然在新加坡講這個聽起來很滑稽,
02:04
because here shipping is so present
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因為海運在這裡相當有存在感,
02:06
that you stuck a ship on top of a hotel.
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你們直接把船放在飯店頂樓(指金沙酒店)。
02:10
(Laughter)
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(笑聲)
02:11
But elsewhere in the world,
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但若你在其它國家
02:13
if you ask the general public what they know
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詢問一般民眾對海運
02:16
about shipping and how much trade is carried by sea,
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及其物流量的了解有多少時,
02:19
you will get essentially a blank face.
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你只會看到一副茫然的表情。
02:23
You will ask someone on the street
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你隨便問一個路人
02:25
if they've heard of Microsoft.
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有沒有聽過微軟,
02:27
I should think they'll say yes,
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我認為你會得到肯定的答案,
02:29
because they'll know that they make software
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因為大家都知道微軟研發
02:31
that goes on computers,
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電腦軟體,
02:33
and occasionally works.
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不是很好用的軟體。
02:36
But if you ask them if they've heard of Maersk,
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但要是改問他們有沒有聽過快桅(Maersk)公司時,
02:40
I doubt you'd get the same response,
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我不認為你還能得到肯定的答案。
02:42
even though Maersk,
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儘管快桅
02:44
which is just one shipping company amongst many,
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只是眾多海運公司裡的其中一間,
02:47
has revenues pretty much on a par with Microsoft.
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它的營收卻幾乎和微軟相當─
02:50
[$60.2 billion]
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602億。
02:52
Now why is this?
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海運業怎麼了?
02:54
A few years ago,
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幾年前,
02:56
the first sea lord of the British admiralty --
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英國皇家海軍第一海務大臣─
02:59
he is called the first sea lord,
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他雖被稱為第一海務大臣,
03:01
although the chief of the army is not called a land lord —
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但不代表陸軍最高統帥就叫做房東 (land lord,音同房東)。
03:05
he said that we, and he meant
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海務大臣認為我們
03:08
in the industrialized nations in the West,
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這些西方工業化國家
03:10
that we suffer from sea blindness.
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得到了"海盲症"。
03:14
We are blind to the sea
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我們看不見
03:16
as a place of industry or of work.
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海洋相關產業與工作,
03:19
It's just something we fly over,
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海洋之於我們只是搭機時
03:21
a patch of blue on an airline map.
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呈現在飛航路線圖上的一片藍色色塊,
03:24
Nothing to see, move along.
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沒什麼好看的,我們直接飛過。
03:27
So I wanted to open my own eyes
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也因此,我渴望張開我的雙眼
03:31
to my own sea blindness,
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來正視我的"海盲症",
03:34
so I ran away to sea.
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於是我投向海洋。
03:38
A couple of years ago, I took a passage
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多年前,我參與了一段
03:40
on the Maersk Kendal,
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馬士基肯德號的航程,
03:42
a mid-sized container ship
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這是一艘中型貨櫃船,
03:44
carrying nearly 7,000 boxes,
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搭載了近7000個箱子。
03:47
and I departed from Felixstowe,
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我從英格蘭南部的
03:49
on the south coast of England,
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菲力克斯托港口出發,
03:51
and I ended up right here in Singapore
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五個星期後正好抵達
03:53
five weeks later,
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新加坡,
03:54
considerably less jet-lagged than I am right now.
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那次的旅程跟這次比,比較沒有時差問題。
03:59
And it was a revelation.
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我徹底開了眼界。
04:02
We traveled through five seas,
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我們航行過五個海、
04:04
two oceans, nine ports,
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兩大洋及九個港口,
04:07
and I learned a lot about shipping.
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而我從中學到很多海運業的知識。
04:10
And one of the first things that surprised me
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第一件讓我驚訝的事情
04:12
when I got on board Kendal
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就發生在我剛登上肯德號時。
04:14
was, where are all the people?
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人都跑去哪了?
04:17
I have friends in the Navy who tell me
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我在海軍服役的朋友們跟我說,
04:18
they sail with 1,000 sailors at a time,
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他們每次出航都會搭載1000名水兵,
04:21
but on Kendal there were only 21 crew.
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但在肯德號上總共只有21名船員。
04:25
Now that's because shipping is very efficient.
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那是因為當代海運非常有效率。
04:28
Containerization has made it very efficient.
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貨櫃運輸大大提升了效率,
04:31
Ships have automation now.
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船隻配備自動化操作系統,
04:33
They can operate with small crews.
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因此小團隊即可勝任。
04:36
But it also means that, in the words
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但這也意味著─
04:37
of a port chaplain I once met,
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套用一個港口牧師跟我講的─
04:40
the average seafarer you're going to find
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你會發現貨櫃船上的船員,
04:42
on a container ship is either tired or exhausted,
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不是疲累就是過勞,
04:46
because the pace of modern shipping
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因為當代海運的工作步調
04:49
is quite punishing for what the shipping calls
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對他們所謂的"人性要素"來講
04:51
its human element,
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是相當繁重緊湊的,
04:53
a strange phrase which they don't seem to realize
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他們似乎沒注意到"人性要素"這詞
04:56
sounds a little bit inhuman.
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在這情境下聽起來並不太人道。
04:58
So most seafarers now working on container ships
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因此大部分在貨櫃船上工作的船員,
05:01
often have less than two hours in port at a time.
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很少能一次在港口待上兩個小時。
05:05
They don't have time to relax.
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他們一刻也不能鬆懈。
05:07
They're at sea for months at a time,
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他們出海時間長達數個月,
05:09
and even when they're on board,
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即便在船上,
05:10
they don't have access to what
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也沒有五歲小孩視為理所當然的
05:12
a five-year-old would take for granted, the Internet.
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網路可用。
05:16
And another thing that surprised me when I got on board Kendal
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另一件讓我訝異的事是,登上肯德號後,
05:19
was who I was sitting next to --
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坐在我身邊的人
05:22
Not the queen; I can't imagine why they put me underneath her portrait --
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並不是女王; 但我不能理解怎麼會被安排坐在她的肖像下面。
05:27
But around that dining table in the officer's saloon,
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但在高級船員交誼廳裡的餐桌上,
05:30
I was sitting next to a Burmese guy,
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我坐在緬甸人旁邊,
05:32
I was opposite a Romanian, a Moldavian, an Indian.
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與羅馬尼亞人、摩爾多瓦人及印度人對坐。
05:35
On the next table was a Chinese guy,
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隔壁桌坐了個中國人,
05:37
and in the crew room, it was entirely Filipinos.
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而船員室裡則清一色都是菲律賓人。
05:40
So that was a normal working ship.
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就是一般作業中船隻的樣子。
05:43
Now how is that possible?
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但這怎麼可能呢?
05:45
Because the biggest dramatic change
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原因在於過去60年間,
05:47
in shipping over the last 60 years,
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當民眾不再留意海運業發展的同時,
05:49
when most of the general public stopped noticing it,
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有一項重大變革問世,
05:51
was something called an open registry,
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那就是所謂的開放登記
05:54
or a flag of convenience.
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或稱權宜船。
05:57
Ships can now fly the flag of any nation
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船隻可懸掛任何一個有提供
05:59
that provides a flag registry.
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船舶國籍登記的國家國旗。
06:02
You can get a flag from the landlocked nation
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你可以取得一些內陸國家的國旗,
06:05
of Bolivia, or Mongolia,
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如玻利維亞、蒙古國
06:07
or North Korea, though that's not very popular.
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或北韓,不過北韓籍並不流行。
06:10
(Laughter)
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(笑聲)
06:11
So we have these very multinational,
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因此船上才能由多國籍、
06:13
global, mobile crews on ships.
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全球化且機動性強的船員所組成,
06:18
And that was a surprise to me.
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這也是令我訝異的地方。
06:21
And when we got to pirate waters,
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而當靠近海盜猖獗的水域,
06:24
down the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and into the Indian Ocean,
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也就是曼德海峽與印度洋之間時,
06:27
the ship changed.
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船做了些改變。
06:29
And that was also shocking, because suddenly,
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這場景相當震撼,
06:32
I realized, as the captain said to me,
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因為我突然想起船長曾跟我說的:
06:34
that I had been crazy to choose to go
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我一定是瘋了才會選擇
06:36
through pirate waters on a container ship.
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搭貨櫃船航經海盜猖獗的水域。
06:39
We were no longer allowed on deck.
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我們不准上甲板,
06:41
There were double pirate watches.
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另佈署雙層警戒以監測海盜。
06:44
And at that time, there were those 544 seafarers being held hostage,
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那時正值544名船員被挾持的期間,
06:48
and some of them were held hostage for years
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其中有些船員早被挾持了好幾年,
06:50
because of the nature of shipping and the flag of convenience.
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這導因於海運業的本質及權宜船制度。
06:53
Not all of them, but some of them were,
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這當中有些船
06:55
because for the minority of unscrupulous ship owners,
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是因為少數不肖船東,
07:00
it can be easy to hide behind
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將船隻登記在特定國籍下
07:02
the anonymity offered by some flags of convenience.
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好隱藏船隻的真實資料。
07:07
What else does our sea blindness mask?
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"海盲症"還有哪些症狀?
07:11
Well, if you go out to sea on a ship
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嗯,若你搭船出海
07:13
or on a cruise ship, and look up to the funnel,
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或來趟郵輪之旅時,抬頭看看煙囪,
07:15
you'll see very black smoke.
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你會看到非常黑的濃煙。
07:18
And that's because shipping
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那是因為海運業的
07:21
has very tight margins, and they want cheap fuel,
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利潤被壓縮得很緊, 因此需要便宜的燃油,
07:23
so they use something called bunker fuel,
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他們用的油叫做釜底燃料油,
07:26
which was described to me by someone in the tanker industry
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依據某油輪業者的說法,
07:28
as the dregs of the refinery,
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這燃油形同煉油後的渣滓,
07:30
or just one step up from asphalt.
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或僅比瀝青再高一階而已。
07:34
And shipping is the greenest method of transport.
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海運是最環保的運輸方式,
07:37
In terms of carbon emissions per ton per mile,
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海運每公噸每公里所產生的碳排放量
07:39
it emits about a thousandth of aviation
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是空運的千分之一,
07:42
and about a tenth of trucking.
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陸運的十分之一。
07:44
But it's not benign, because there's so much of it.
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但這不代表它對環境無害,因為有太多艘船隻了,
07:48
So shipping emissions are about three to four percent,
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因此海運碳排放量佔全球總量的3%到4%左右,
07:50
almost the same as aviation's.
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幾乎跟航空業一樣。
07:52
And if you put shipping emissions
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若將全國碳排放量做排行,
07:54
on a list of the countries' carbon emissions,
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海運業
07:57
it would come in about sixth,
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大概位於第六名。
07:59
somewhere near Germany.
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在2009年德國外海某處,
08:01
It was calculated in 2009 that the 15 largest ships
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有項針對該處15艘大型船隻所做的汙染報告指出,
08:05
pollute in terms of particles and soot
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其懸浮微粒、煤煙
08:07
and noxious gases
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及有毒氣體,
08:09
as much as all the cars in the world.
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與全球汽車總排放量相當。
08:11
And the good news is that
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好消息是
08:13
people are now talking about sustainable shipping.
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人們開始重視海運業的永續發展,
08:15
There are interesting initiatives going on.
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一些富巧思的創舉也正實行中。
08:17
But why has it taken so long?
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但這歷程為何如此緩慢?
08:20
When are we going to start talking and thinking
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我們何時才能對海運業有更深一步的思考,
08:22
about shipping miles as well as air miles?
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正如我們面對航運業的問題一樣?
08:26
I also traveled to Cape Cod to look
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我曾走訪鱈魚角以了解
08:29
at the plight of the North Atlantic right whale,
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北大西洋露脊鯨所面臨的困境,
08:33
because this to me was one of the most surprising things
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因為在我的海洋之旅裡,
08:35
about my time at sea,
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這是最令我感驚奇的事情之一,
08:37
and what it made me think about.
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也引發我的思考。
08:39
We know about man's impact on the ocean
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我們知道漁業、過度濫捕等人為因素
08:42
in terms of fishing and overfishing,
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對海洋所造成的衝擊,
08:44
but we don't really know much about
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卻鮮少知道
08:46
what's happening underneath the water.
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水面下發生了什麼事,
08:48
And in fact, shipping has a role to play here,
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事實上,海運正對此造成了影響,
08:51
because shipping noise has contributed
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因為輪船的噪音已對
08:55
to damaging the acoustic habitats of ocean creatures.
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仰賴聽覺的海洋生物構成了傷害。
08:58
Light doesn't penetrate beneath the surface of the water,
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光無法徹底穿透海洋,
09:01
so ocean creatures like whales and dolphins
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因此海洋生物如鯨、豚
09:03
and even 800 species of fish
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及多達800種的魚類等,
09:06
communicate by sound.
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都是透過聲音來溝通。
09:09
And a North Atlantic right whale
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北大西洋露脊鯨的聲音
09:10
can transmit across hundreds of miles.
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能傳達數百哩,
09:13
A humpback can transmit a sound
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座頭鯨的聲音甚至能
09:15
across a whole ocean.
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傳遍整個海洋,
09:17
But a supertanker can also be heard
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但超大型油輪的聲音
09:19
coming across a whole ocean,
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也能傳遍整片海洋。
09:21
and because the noise that propellers make underwater
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而船螺旋槳在水裡
09:24
is sometimes at the same frequency that whales use,
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所產生的噪音頻率有時和鯨魚一模一樣,
09:27
then it can damage their acoustic habitat,
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這侵害了鯨魚的"聽覺棲地",
09:30
and they need this for breeding,
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鯨魚相當仰賴聽覺來繁殖、
09:32
for finding feeding grounds,
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覓食
09:34
for finding mates.
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及找尋配偶。
09:36
And the acoustic habitat of the North Atlantic right whale
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而北大西洋露脊鯨的"聽覺棲地"
09:39
has been reduced by up to 90 percent.
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已減少了90%,
09:42
But there are no laws governing acoustic pollution yet.
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但目前仍未有法令針對噪音汙染做規範。
09:47
And when I arrived in Singapore,
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當年在我抵達新加坡後,
09:50
and I apologize for this, but I didn't want to get off my ship.
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我得為此道歉,但我並不想下船。
09:55
I'd really loved being on board Kendal.
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我真的很享受待在肯德號上的日子,
09:58
I'd been well treated by the crew,
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團員們對我很照顧,
10:00
I'd had a garrulous and entertaining captain,
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又有個多話且幽默的船長,
10:04
and I would happily have signed up for another five weeks,
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我原本很樂意再另外待上五個禮拜,
10:08
something that the captain also said
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船長也說過
10:09
I was crazy to think about.
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我一定是瘋了才會這樣想。
10:12
But I wasn't there for nine months at a time
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我畢竟不像那些菲律賓籍船員
10:14
like the Filipino seafarers,
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一待就是九個月,
10:16
who, when I asked them to describe their job to me,
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當被問及到他們的工作內容時,
10:18
called it "dollar for homesickness."
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他們說那是「金錢換想家」。
10:21
They had good salaries,
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他們的收入不錯,
10:22
but theirs is still an isolating and difficult life
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但得在危險且艱困的海上環境裡
10:25
in a dangerous and often difficult element.
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時時面對生活的孤寂與磨練。
10:29
But when I get to this part, I'm in two minds,
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而講到這裡,我思緒分成了兩個部分,
10:31
because I want to salute those seafarers
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我要向那些船員們致敬,
10:34
who bring us 90 percent of everything
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他們默默的替我們
10:36
and get very little thanks or recognition for it.
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帶來了生活中90%的物品;
10:40
I want to salute the 100,000 ships
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我也要向那正在海上航行的
10:42
that are at sea
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十萬艘船致敬,
10:44
that are doing that work, coming in and out
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他們每天起卸貨物、進出海港,
10:46
every day, bringing us what we need.
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以供給我們所需。
10:49
But I also want to see shipping,
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除此之外,我也希望海運業
10:52
and us, the general public, who know so little about it,
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及對這產業所知甚少的我們
10:56
to have a bit more scrutiny,
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能進一步審視這產業,
10:58
to be a bit more transparent,
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讓海運業更透明化,
11:00
to have 90 percent transparency.
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以窺知其90%的面貌。
11:03
Because I think we could all benefit
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我認為一個簡單的行動
11:06
from doing something very simple,
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就能讓我們從中獲益,
11:08
which is learning to see the sea.
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那就是開始認識海洋。
11:11
Thank you.
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謝謝各位。
11:14
(Applause)
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(掌聲)
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