新托福阅读材料：8WildWaystoCombatInvasiveSpecies（4）

　外来入侵物种对本地区的生态系统会造成许多不良影响，科学家们用自己的聪明才智研究出了许多对抗这些“外来侵略者”的有趣方法。接下来我们就一起来看看吧!

 

　　Slurping Up Suffocating Algae in Hawaii

 

　　Biologists have a new weapon in the battle to save Hawaii's coral reefs from invasive algae—the Super Sucker. Essentially a giant vacuum, the Super Sucker can remove up to 360 kilograms of alien algae from the reef each hour.

 

　　Hawaii is home to at least 20 types of nonnative algae. But two kinds, brought to the island for research in the 1970s, are especially noxious—Gracilaria and Eucheuma. They grow rapidly, kill corals and destroy the diversity of the reefs by filling in the nooks and crannies where native sea creatures like to live and hide. "[The algae] takes a healthy diverse system and chops it off right at the knees," says Eric Conklin, the Nature Conservancy's marine science advisor in Hawaii.

 

　　The Conservancy has had some success holding community cleanup events where volunteers remove the algae by hand. But no one wants to spend every weekend picking algae off reefs. "We needed something that would basically produce the same effect as these big volunteer events, but that could be operated by a smaller number of people on a very regular basis, and in areas where community cleanups couldn't go," Conklin says.

 

　　So, in 2006 Conklin and his colleagues MacGyver-ed an alternative: a giant underwater vacuum. The pump—filched from a gold prospecting machine—sits above water on a floating platform, and the 100-foot hose extends down into the water. "We started off calling it 'The Super Sucker' as a joke," Conklin says. But eventually the name stuck.

 

　　The Super Sucker isn't that much faster than hand removal, but it requires a far smaller crew—a couple of divers feed algae into the hose and a few people work on the platform, picking out any by-catch and packing the algae into burlap bags. So far, the Super Sucker has helped restore more than eight hectares of reef.

 

　　Removing the algae, however, is only half the battle. To keep it from growing back, Conklin and his colleagues are looking at using native sea urchins, which feed on the algae. "The long-term solution," he says, "is better protection of herbivorous fish."