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A woman from Hancock, Maine, discovered that a tourist snapshot of a humpback whale on Flickr matched with photos documented in the Allied Whale research catalogue, providing proof that this whale had traveled 6,000 miles, the longest documented distance of any humpback. Christie Nicholson reports
一位来自美国缅因州汉考克的妇女发现，Flickr上一位游客所拍快照中的座头鲸 ，与 Allied Whale组织研究目录上刊登的照片中的座头鲸完全一样。这就证明了这条鲸鱼已经游了6,000 英里，是目前座头鲸所留下记录的游行距离中最长的。Christie Nicholson 报道
Gale McCollough is a school teacher who lives near the small seaside town of Hancock, Maine. From that humble location, she recently made an extraordinary discovery.
Gale McCollough 住在汉考克一个靠近海边的小村庄里，目前是名教师。在那么一个简陋的地方，却让她有了惊人的发现。
Using the photo-sharing site Flickr and a personal history of studying whale photos, she identified a picture, taken in 2001 by tourist Freddy Johansen in Madagascar, of an Antarctic humpback known to scientists as number 1363. Two years earlier, researchers had spotted 1363, a female, swimming alongside another whale in Brazil. Brazil to Madagascar. That’s a distance of 6,000 miles, nearly double any documented migration by a humpback.
在浏览照片分享网站Flickr的时候，她独自研究了些鲸鱼照片的来历，认出了一张由游客 Freddy Johansen 于2001年摄于马达加斯加岛的照片。照片中正是科学家们所熟知的，编号1363 的南极座头鲸。两年前，研究人员发现了1363，这是头雌性座头鲸，当时正和另一头座头鲸沿着巴西海岸游着。而巴西至马达加斯加岛足足有6,000 英里，几乎是已知座头鲸迁徙距离的两倍。
（图片提供：Peter Stiveck）译者注：图中较大的那只就是1363 Since the late 1970s the Allied Whale research group at the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor has built a catalogue of whale photos. McCollough scoured the catalogue and developed an expertise for identifying humpbacks based on their distinct shape, color and markings.
二十世纪70年代末期以来，巴港大西洋学院的Allied Whale 研究组织已经为鲸鱼照片创建了个目录。McCollough查找了整个目录，在基于鲸鱼们各自截然不同的形状、颜色、斑纹的基础上，她培养出了一种辨别座头鲸的技能。
More recently McCollough searched for “humpback” on Flickr and unlocked an embarrassment of riches. She consolidated the pics into a group, and then in 2009, caught sight of number 1363 in the Johansen photo. The discovery led to her co-authoring a paper published earlier this month in Biology Letters, and earning her the esteemed title of citizen scientist. In the process, she changed our understanding of the humpback whale.
最近以来 McCollough 一直在Flickr上搜索座头鲸，渐渐打破了这资料丰富却杂乱的窘境。她曾经把这些照片整理后送给一个组织，然而到了2009年，她就在Johansen的照片里看到了1363。这次发现使她与人合著了篇论文，并于本月早些时候发表在了《生物学快报》杂志上。同时这项发现也为她赢得了“民间科学家”这一深受尊敬的称号。在此过程中，她改变了我们对座头鲸原有的认识。
