"海蛇"(续2）-环宇时空-休闲英语-轻松英语-洪恩在线

The Definitive Sea Serpent

3. SEA SERPENTS COMPARED

How does this creature compare to other authoritative sea-serpent reports? Meade-Waldo was aware[1] of the famous 1848 sighting by the crew of the frigate HMS Daedalus. He commented that his own creature "might easily be the same." The Daedalus witnesses reported an animal resembling "a large snake or eel with a visible length of 60 feet. Captain Peter McQuahe saw what he thought was a mane on its back, while his subordinate, Lieutenant Drummond, thought the feature was a dorsal fin.

4. ARE THERE GIANT EELS?

A German vessel, the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, observed such a creature in its entirety[2] off England in 1912. The Kaiserin's Captain Ruser described it as twenty feet long and about eighteen inches thick. In 1947, the Grace liner Santa Clara ran over a brown eel-like creature estimated at 60 feet long. Finally, Leading cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans add an account[3] of some tourists who went spearfishing in the Mediterranean in 1958. They allegedly had a very close encounter with a creature like a giant moray eel, which literally scared them out of the water. Any discussion of the giant eel theory must mention the six-foot long leptocephalus, or eel larvae, collected by the research vessel Dana in 1930. A normal leptocephalus is only three inches long. Some forty years after the Dana specimen was netted, however, it was reclassified as the larva of an eellike deep-sea fish belonging to a group called noticanthiforms. Known noticanthiforms don't change much in size during the metamorphosis from larva to adult.

(to be continued...)

注释：

1． aware：
知道的，觉察的。 be aware of 是最常见的用法。比如：Are you aware of the difficulty?你感觉到困难了吗？aware有时还能做定语，表示“懂（时）事的，关心周围事物的”，比如：It's nice to be with such an aware person. 与这样一个懂时务的人在一起得益匪浅。

2． entirety：
完全，全部，全体，总体。一个常用词组是in its entirety，表示“全盘”，比如：If published it should be published in its entirety.如发表，就应全部发表。

3． account：
描述，报道，记事。give /render an account of 表示“对……作一叙述”；by/from all accounts表示“根据大家所说”。比如：“众就纷纭”可以说成Accounts differ.

3. 相关报道

这只海怪与那些关于海蛇的权威报道有什么关联吗？ 1848年，HMS Daedalus驱逐舰上的船员就曾目击过一只海上巨物。与这则轰动一时的奇闻联系起来，Meade-Waldo开始觉得自己看到的极有可能就是同一只怪物。Daedalus上的目击者声称那是一只类似巨蛇或海鳗的动物，可见部分长约60英尺。船长Peter McQuahe还说看到了它背上的鬃毛，而他的下属Lieutenant Drummond则认为那应该是背鳍。

4.真有巨鳗存在？

1912年，一艘名为Kaiserin Augusta Victoria的德国船曾在英国沿海看到过整条巨鳗。船长Ruser描述它约有20英尺长，18英尺粗。1947年，一艘豪华游轮Santa Clara曾驶越一条长约60英尺的褐色似鳗怪物。在这一海上怪物的相关报道当中，一位权威的隐性动物学家Bernard Heuvelmans最终将1958年地中海游客的叙述也加了进去。据说，当时他们正在用鱼叉捕鱼，一只类似巨型海鳗的生物与他们打了个照面，吓得他们差点逃离海面。任何有关巨鳗的讨论都少不了会提到一条6英尺长的幼年鳗鱼，那是一艘名为Dana科学探险船于1930年网获的标本。而正常情况下的一条幼鳗仅长3英寸。在Dana网获这一标本的40年里，人们对它重新进行了分类：它属于一种类似鳗鱼的名为noticanthiforms的深海鱼类。在从幼年到成年的变形过程中，这种鱼的大小不会有很大改变。

（待续……）