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The deep has long been treated as somehow separate from the surface world, a shadowy non-place populated by alien creatures.[qh]
长期以来，深海一直被视为与地表世界不同的地方，一个没有外星生物居住的阴暗地方。[qh]
While this is partly a response to the difficulty of studying it, it also reflects an ingrained tendency.[qh]
虽然这在一定程度上是对其研究难度的反应，但它也反映了一种根深蒂固的趋势。[qh]
As the writer Robert Macfarlane has observed, humans are creatures of the air and light, and we have often regarded the spaces beneath our feet with abhorrence, associating them with death, entombment and the unseen and unnameable.[qh]
正如作家罗伯特·麦克法兰所观察到的那样，人类是属于空气和光的生物，我们常常对脚下的空间充满厌恶，把它们与死亡、埋葬、看不见的、难以形容的事物联系在一起。[qh]
And while what Macfarlane calls the underland might be a place of ritual power as well as a place of burial, the ocean's depths are more frequently equated with loss and forgetting.[qh]
虽然麦克法兰所说的地下可能是一个仪式权力的地方，也是一个埋葬的地方，但海洋深处更经常被等同于失去和遗忘。[qh]
Although those versed in traditional wayfinding techniques often understood the ocean in more complex ways, the idea of the deep as an unknowable non-place was also embedded in navigational practices.[qh]
虽然那些精通传统寻路技术的人通常以更复杂的方式理解海洋，但深海是一个不可知的“非地方”，这一想法同样植根于航海实践中。[qh]
For European sailors plying the waters of the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic and Indian oceans, all that really mattered was knowing where potential obstacles and risks such as reefs and sandbars lay – a way of thinking that transformed the ocean's depths into a blank irrelevance.[qh]
对于在地中海、大西洋和印度洋上航行的欧洲水手来说，真正重要的是知道潜在的障碍和风险，比如珊瑚礁和沙洲在哪里——这种思维方式把海洋深处变成了一个空白的无关紧要的地方。[qh]
It was not until the early 19th century that a more detailed scientific understanding of the deep began to take shape.[qh]
直到19世纪初，对深海的更详细的科学认识才开始形成。[qh]
In part, this was a result of the growing reach of the colonial powers: as the commercial and territorial aspirations of Europeans and Americans expanded to encompass the globe, the need for more accurate and more detailed knowledge of the ocean grew as well.[qh]
在某种程度上，这是殖民势力不断扩张的结果：随着欧洲人和美国人对商业和领土的渴望扩展到全球，对更准确、更详细的海洋知识的需求也在增长。[qh]
But it also grew out of the experiences of whalers, whose voyages were now taking them far out into the open waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, and leading to an appreciation of the great depths to which whales would often dive.[qh]
不过，这种认识也产生于捕鲸人的经验，他们的航行现在已经把他们远远地带到了大西洋和太平洋的开阔水域，并使他们对鲸鱼经常潜到的深海有了认识。[qh]
This interest in the deep ocean took on a new urgency in the 1850s, when British and American entrepreneurs began to lay the first submarine telegraph cables across the Atlantic.[qh]
19世纪50年代，当英美企业家开始铺设第一条横跨大西洋的海底电报电缆时，这种对深海的兴趣呈现出新的紧迫性。[qh]
The technical challenges of these ventures demanded a more detailed understanding of the ocean floor.[qh]
这些冒险的技术挑战要求对海底有更详细的了解。[qh]
But it was not until the Challenger expedition circumnavigated the globe on its pioneering scientific survey of the world's oceans in the 1870s that the true extent of the deep ocean finally started to emerge.[qh]
但是，直到19世纪70年代，“挑战者”号探险队环绕地球航行，开始对世界海洋进行开创性的科学调查，深海的深度才终于开始显现。[qh]
In the north-west Pacific, where the Mariana Trench plunges downwards into the planet's crust, HMS Challenger recorded depths in excess of 8,000 metres.[qh]
在西北太平洋，马里亚纳海沟向下插入地球地壳的地方，挑战者号记录的深度超过8000米。[qh]
Perhaps even more startling to the scientists of the day, though, was Challenger's discovery of tiny shells – and therefore living things – more than 7,000 metres down.[qh]
也许更让当时的科学家们吃惊的是，挑战者号在7000米深的海底发现了小贝壳——也就是生物。[qh]
