Hey there, and welcome to News Bites!
I'm Trevor Tortomasi…
And I'm Paz Bueno.
In today's news:
Taiwan celebrates Beach Cleanup Day, dolphins can recognize each other, and a woman gets to celebrate her birthday in a special way.
Stay tuned for more on those stories, coming up next.
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台灣慶祝淨灘日
Taiwan Celebrates Beach Cleanup Day
May 28th was an important day for Taiwan's beaches.
That's when different groups across Taiwan got together for a special activity, to clean up Taiwan's beaches.
The activity is called a "beach cleanup" (淨灘).
The beach cleanup happened on 24 beaches altogether (總共).
Beach cleanups are an important activity, because even though we are careful about sorting our trash (垃圾分類), we aren't doing enough to keep it from reaching the sea.
The trash situation is so bad, researchers say they have found more than 121,000 pieces of trash on Taiwan's west coast (台灣西海岸)!
Many different kinds of trash can be found in Taiwan's waters and beaches.
This includes plastic (塑膠), driftwood (漂流木), fishing nets (漁網), bottles (瓶罐), and polystyrene (保麗龍).
They have even found pieces of furniture (家具)!
Some say more than half of the trash found on Taiwan's proper beaches come from China.
有人說台灣海灘上超過一半的垃圾都是從大陸漂來的。
And 30 percent of it comes from Taiwan.
The rest of the trash comes from Thailand (泰國), South Korea (南韓), and Indonesia (印尼).
On Matsu Island (馬祖), researchers found that 93 percent of waste came from China.
Trash researchers are especially worried about the kind of plastic bottles that they are finding in the ocean.
They say many of the bottles they find in the sea were made just 23 days before they became ocean trash (海洋垃圾)!
That means it only takes a few weeks for a bottle to become trash, after it has been made.
In order to cut down on ocean trash, it's important for us to do more than just sorting our garbage.
We need to watch what we use, too!
That's the only way we can make sure that fewer things end up as trash in the ocean.
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海豚如何認得彼此？
How Do Dolphins Recognize Each Other?
People have always been interested in dolphins (對海豚有興趣).
In fact, dolphins can be seen in art (藝術作品) that is thousands of years old (數千年前)!
And there are even some stories are about how dolphins have saved humans from drowning (聽說海豚還會搶救要溺水的人).
As humans, we have a way of recognizing each other (我們認得彼此).
We look at faces, we listen to voices, and we even recognize the way a person likes to wear his or her clothes.
So scientists wanted to know if there was something dolphins did that could help them recognize each other.
Do dolphins whistle (吹口哨) to each other?
Do they recognize what their friends look like?
It turns out, dolphins do have a special way of recognizing their friends.
They do it using their friend's urine.
他們用朋友的尿來認出彼此。
Scientists found out this was happening because they couldn't understand why dolphins kept swimming through their friends' urine.
So they tested the dolphin's reactions by first pouring ice water into the sea, and then compared that to the way they reacted when there is urine in the water.
Scientists say it's one of the first times an animal has used taste to tell friends from strangers (陌生人).
We might think it's gross (噁心), but it doesn't seem to bother the dolphins at all!
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生物學家「最棒的生日」
One Biologist's "Best Birthday Ever"
In Spain, a marine biologist (海洋生物學家) recently spent her birthday doing something she didn't expect.
She saved the life of a humpback whale (座頭鯨)!
She was part of a team sent to rescue a whale trapped in a red fishing net.
她是救援小組的成員之一，去幫助受困在紅色漁網裡的鯨魚。
The whale was so weak it couldn't open its mouth.
It took divers 45 minutes to free it (把鯨魚從網中釋放出來).
The biologist says that after the whale was freed, it stayed to say "thank you" to divers who saved its life.
She says the rescue made her birthday the best one ever.
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So, in today's News Bites:
On May 28th, groups across Taiwan got together for a beach cleanup.
The beach cleanup happened on 24 beaches altogether.
Beach cleanups are an important activity, because even though we are careful about sorting our trash, we aren't doing enough to keep it from reaching the sea.
________________________________
And,
Scientists studying dolphins wanted to know if they had a special way to recognize each other.
They discovered that dolphins can recognize their friends through their urine.
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And,
A marine biologist in Spain recently spent her birthday saving the life of a humpback whale.
The whale was trapped in a fishing net, and it took divers 45 minutes to free it.
The biologist says that after the whale was freed, it stayed to say "thank you" to divers who saved its life.
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And that's today's episode of News Bites!