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But there is something else I've learned about this place, something hidden in Bailique's wild terrain.
但关于这个地方，我还学到了一些别的，是某种隐藏在贝利克荒野中的事物。
Maybe "disguised" is a better word -- for, during my initial expedition in 2022, I was confused at first to see no sign of the foliage that I had expected would crowd the islands' coastlines: mangroves.
或许“伪装”是比较好的说法，因为我2022年第一次来探勘的时候，起初很困惑，怎么没有看到预期中应该遍布群岛海岸线的植物，也就是红树林。
I'm part of an international group of scientists studying the ecological benefits of mangroves, those dense tangles of arching trunks and branches that grow in and alongside warm tidal waters.
我参与的一个国际科学家团体专门研究红树林对生态的好处，这种植物的枝干弯曲，彼此紧密交织生长在温暖的潮间带水域及周遭。
We use "mangrove" as a group name for certain kinds of trees that require these tropical salty conditions, and in recent years we have learned how desperately the warming planet needs them.
我们用“红树林”一词作为一群需要这种热带咸水环境的特定树种的集合名词，而我们近年来才了解到，逐渐暖化的地球是多么迫切地需要这类植物。
The trees' woody underwater architecture makes a safe home for the marine life on which fishing societies depend.
这类树木在水下形成木质结构，是渔业社会赖以为生的海洋生物的安全居所。
On land, the tough root networks help prevent erosion.
在陆地上。强韧的根部网络有助避免土壤遭到侵蚀。
Mangroves are exceptionally efficient at carbon capture: Within the muddy sediment beneath the roots, they can trap -- keep out of the atmosphere -- up to 10 times as much carbon as other kinds of tropical trees.
红树林的碳捕获效率极高：在根部底下的泥泞沉积物中，它们捕获的碳是其他热带树种的十倍，让碳不会跑到大气中。
But in many places where mangroves have traditionally thrived -- Indonesia and the Philippines, for example -- they are disappearing, cleared out to make way for shrimp farms and other development.
但在许多原本红树林蓬勃生长的地方--例如印尼和菲律宾--现在红树林都逐渐绝迹，被清空开发成养虾场或进行其他开发。
Brazil has laws protecting mangrove forests, but to enforce those laws, the government needs to know exactly where the mangroves are, which is why our team (including fellow National Geographic Explorers Margaret Owuor and Thiago Sanna Freire Silva) conducted that first Bailique exploration.
巴西有法律保护红树林，但如果要执行这些法律，政府必须先确认哪里有红树林，所以我们的团队（包括同为国家地理探险家的玛格瑞·奥武和帝亚戈·桑纳·佛列拉·席尔瓦）才进行了第一次的贝利克探勘。
We knew nobody had yet formally surveyed the foliage of the river mouth islands.
我们知道还没有人正式调查过河口群岛的植物。
I remember our boat chugging slowly through the different channels of the archipelago, nearing one shore after another, and... No mangroves.
我还记得我们的船噗噗噗地慢慢穿行在群岛的各处水道，靠近一处又一处的岛岸，结果...没有红树林。
Where were they? We saw tall acai palms, bamboos, and coconut trees.
它们在哪里？我们看到了高耸的阿萨伊棕榈、竹子和椰子树。
We started climbing off the boat to investigate, increasingly perplexed.
我们开始下船探索，但是越来越困惑。
Finally, we pushed into one beautiful mess of high jungly overgrowth and looked up and around and BOOM, mangroves -- but growing in a way none of us thought possible.
最后，我们钻进一片密密交织的美丽高大丛林，环顾四周，然后突然领悟，这就是红树林--但生长的方式却是我们认为根本不可能的。
They were a little distance inland, scattered amid freshwater trees, intertwined with them and sharing their soil.
它们长在稍微内陆一点的地方，生长在淡水树种之间，也和淡水树种互相交织并共享土壤。
As a marine ecologist, I promise you: This does not happen. Or so we had thought.
身为海洋生态学家，我可以跟你保证：没有这种事。又或者只是我们这样以为。
Amazonia is not like any other place on Earth, and the river mouth is not like any other place in Amazonia.
亚马逊流域跟地球上其他地方都不一样，它的河口也跟亚马逊的其他地方都不一样。
What we found there may be an ecologically unique kind of forest, with 130-foot mangroves, among the biggest I've ever seen, growing in ground that seems insufficiently salty to sustain them.
我们在那里发现的可能是一种生态上很独特的森林，那里有130英尺高的红树林，是我见过数一数二大的、生长在照理不够咸、无法维持它们生长的土地上。
Another Bailique astonishment, like the plume. Chico motored us over there so I could show the monster stealth mangroves to Felipe, who was not part of the 2022 team.
这是贝利克的又一个惊奇之处，就像羽流一样。奇柯开船载我们到那里，好让我能指给费利佩看看这些庞大的隐形红树林，因为他没有参加2022年的团队。
It took him a minute, craning his neck upward and squinting, to sort out what he was looking at. "Nossa," he said. Wow.
他花了一分钟，伸长脖子，眯着眼睛，弄清楚自己到底看到了什么。“Nossa（哇），”他说。
It turns out that unusual stands like these grow all over the archipelago, which means updated maps now include thousands of acres of newly identified mangrove forests eligible for protection.
结果整片群岛都有这种不寻常的树林，这代表更新过的地图上如今包括了几百公顷新辨识出、合乎保护资格的红树林。
Some of the trees are so big, and probably so old, that the soils trapped beneath them may be profoundly deep carbon sinks, "an unprecedented value to climate mitigation," we wrote in the first science paper published after that initial visit.
有些树实在太大，可能也已经很老了，所以底下抓住的土壤可能是很深很深的碳汇，“对减缓气候变化的价值前所未有。”我们在首度造访后发表的第一篇科学报告中写道。
Encouraging news, so far.
到目前为止，这是鼓舞人心的消息。
And Felipe and I are discovering that people here don't realize they live amid mangroves.
费利佩和我后来发现，这里的人根本不知道自己就住在红树林里面。
They have their own names for the trees our team recognized; those beneficial mangroves they hear about are the distant thickets up and down the Atlantic coastline, they say.
我们团队辨识出来的这些树木，他们有自己取的名字；他们说，我们说的那种很多好处的红树林离他们很远，是沿大西洋海岸线分布的灌丛。
When we ask a survey question about how they use nature, and we mention mangroves, their response is always the same: "We don't have those here."
当我们在调查中询问他们如何利用大自然时，如果提到红树林，他们的反应都一样：“我们这里没有那种树。”
