Rough (Seas): (mares) turbulentos
Ruining: arruinando
Run Aground: encallar (Encallar: tocar fondo un barco)
Sand Plover: chorlito de arena
Sandy: arenoso
Sea Cows: morsas
Sea-Bed: lecho del mar (Lecho: fondo)
Seal: sello
Seals: focas
Seaworthy: apropiado para la navegación marítima
Seep: filtrarse
Semi-submersible: semi-sumergible
Shallow: poco profundo
Shanty Town: barriada pobre
Shipping Routes: rutas marítimas, de embarque
Shores: orillas
Shortage: falta, escasez
Shrimps: langostinos
Skimming Vessels: buques de espuma
Slick: película oleosa
Slightly: ligeramente
Snapper: tortuga mordedora
Soil: suelo
Source: origen
Spill: desparramo
Spillages: derrames
Spots: lugares, puntos
Spread: desparramar, expandir
Starvation: hambre, síndrome clínico del hambre
Steering Equipment: equipo de dirección
Sticky: pegajoso, viscoso
Storage Tanks: tanques de almacenamiento
Stranded: varado
Stretches: trechos, tramos
Struggling: luchando
Supplies: demandas
Supply: suministro
Swallow: tragar, ingerir
Swamp: pantano
Tar: alquitrán
Task Force: agrupación de fuerzas para una misión especial
Thick: espeso, grueso
Thin: delgado
Threatens: amenaza
Tidal Currents: corrientes de la marea
Tides: mareas
Tightly Controlled: estrictamente controlado
Trace: rastrear
Treacle: melaza, melado; Treacle Like: empalagoso, espeso como la melaza (Melaza: miel)
Tugboat: barco remolcador
Unspoiled: intacto, natural
Vacuum Pumps: bomba aspirante
Vast: inmenso
Virtually: virtualmente (Virtualmente: realmente)
Vital: esencial
Wading Bird: ave zancuda (Zancuda: piernas largas)
Waste: de desagüe, de relleno sanitario, desechos
Well: pozo; yacimiento petrolífero
Widespread: esparcido, generalizado
Within: dentro
Worldwide Shipping: embarcación mundial
Worth: valor
Wrecked: naufragado
OIL SPILLS
I am going to talk about oil spills.
Each year millions of tones of used oil, end up on our lands or in our seas. While some of the spilled oil is caused by accidents, by far the greatest amount is the result of human actions. Strict controls are needed to reduce the devastating damage caused by oil spills. However, in the end, the world may need to use cleaner and safer forms of energy to avoid many of the disastrous effects that result from oil spills.
Each day, the world uses about sixty million barrels of oil, which are transportated around the world in huge tankers. Accidental spills or leakages, as well as deliberate dumping, have left the world´s most important shipping routes severely affected by oil pollution. The map in this photo (photo 3), shows the principal oil tankers routes. Many accidents occur in busy shipping lanes near to coastlines. When tankers cross the North Sea, they face additional hazards such as oil and gas drilling platforms and car ferries. When oil is spilled at sea, it quickly forms a giant oil slick. High winds or rough seas can push the slick onto nearby shores, covering them in thick black oil, and causing serious harm to wildlife. Oil forms an oily film on the water´s surface, which blocks out vital supplies of light and air from the marine life in the water beneath. Eventually the spilled oil breaks down and disperses.
The seas around very densely populated cities, as the Mediterranean, are the worst affected by oil pollution. The Mediterranean is often the outlet for discharges from industrial centres, and as there are no tides in this sea, oil cannot easily be washed away or dispersed.
Human beings, also dispose oil on the land. This oil seeps into the ground, contaminating underground water sources and polluting our supplies of drinking water. Oil can also leak onto the land from faulty pipelines or storage tanks. This photo (photo 5) shows the giant Alaska pipeline which carries oil from the oilfields of the frozen north to terminals such as Valdez on the Alaskan coast. On land, oil forms an invisible film over the soil, acting as a seal that prevents water and oxygen from penetrating below the surface. In this way, it harms creatures such as earthworms, which are needed to keep soil healthy and fertile. The oil ends up in rivers, as the one shown here (photo 2), where it reduces the oxygen supply needed for fish and other creatures to survive.
(Now I am going to explain to you how do oil spills occur, and the damage they cause.)
Almost one half of the oil that is added to the world´s seas each year, has drained from the land. The most disastrous oil spills usualy occur when two tankers collide at sea, or when a tanker catches fire or runs aground on rocks. However a more common source of oil spills at sea is from ships discharging waste engine oil into the sea. Oil spills can also be the result of deliberate human actions. Oil tankers also add oily waste to the sea during the cleaning of their cargo tanks.
Oil spills at sea are often carried long distances by ocean currents, tides and strong winds. These spills are responsible for the destruction of entire wildlife habitats, and for killing or injuring large sea creatures such as whales and seals, as well as seabirds, fishes and small seashore animals.
Thousand of animals die in the world´s oil polluted waters each year. Oil quickly spreads out across water, creating a greasy film over the surface. This greasy film sticks to the bodies of sea-birds, clogging their feathers. These birds become unable to fly and, because oil affects their buoyancy, they cannot float either. As the feathers become coated with oil, they no longer insulate the bird´s body against cold. Marine mammals such as seals, swallow oil from the water or from their fur as they try to clean it off their bodies. Other creatures die from starvation when their food supply which consist on Plankton, is poisoned. Plankton, the tiny plants and animals which live on and below the water´s surface, provide food for many larger marine creatures such as whales. Along the shoreline, oil mixes with sand and then sinks down onto the sea-bed, destroying the breeding and feeding grounds of creatures such as oysters. Oil can also coat the eggs and larvae of fishes, causing the young fishes to be born damaged.
During bad weather, sea-birds may mistake an area of oily water for calm sea. Sea-birds caught in an oil slick die either from drowning, exposure to the cold or from poisoning. Those that are rescued may be taken to a special centre, where they are fed a mixture of water, sugar and salt. They are then cleaned with detergent.
The sheep in this photo (photo 1) have been covered with oil from the fires that burned in the Kuwaiti oil fields after the Gulf War. Many sheep died in Kuwait, either from breathing oil droplets in the air, or from eating oil-covered grass.
Oil spills also affect the economy of people. Oil coats beaches and rocky shores, ruining the beauty spots and popular tourist resorts. Local people who depend on tourism and fishing to earn a living, are directly harmed by this pollution.
After an oil spill at sea, it is vital that rescue services take action within the first few hours. Special skimming vessels remove the oil floating on the water´s surface. Another method is to break up the oil slick by spraying it with chemicals, as it is shown in this photo (photo 4). The chemicals help to disperse the slick by separating the droplets of oil. However, the effects of some chemicals may be poisonous to fish and other forms of marine life. Oil can also be burned off the sea, but this method produces a thick black smoke that can harm both people and wildlife living nearby. In areas where the water and air temperature are high, some of the oil will evaporate naturally off the sea.
One method to remove oil from sand and rocks along the shore, is to spread fertiliser along the beaches, which causes the growth of tiny organisms. They feed on oil and clean it up.
I think we could do many things to prevent oil pollution, or at least to reduce it. Proper collection and recycling methods must be introduced for the safe disposal of used oil. At sea the dumping of oil and washing-out of cargo tanks must be even more tightly controlled. Improved reception facilities in ports will help to reduce oil discharges at sea. Accidental oil pollution could be reduced by, for example, limiting the actual size of cargo tanks.
Also, we could reduce the consumption of oil by using alternative sources of energy, such as wind power and solar power. The problem of oil spills on land could be helped by developing car fuels and oils which cause less pollution.
Although almost nobody takes care about oil pollution, there are some people doing things to reduce it, for example: there is an organization called The International Maritime Organization, which regulates worldwide shipping and deals with pollution issues and shipping safety. Also, in nineteen ninety one (1991), the U.S. government announced that all tankers travelling within three hundred and twenty kilometres (320) of the U.S. coastline must be equipped with a double hull by the year twenty fifteen (2015).
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris till he was ten. Then he moved to London where he was educated. He gained fame and success as a short-story writer. He died in 1963.
When the story-teller main character was a small boy he was made to learn by heart certain of the fables of La Fontaine, and the moral of each was explained to him. Among them he learnt "The ant and the grasshopper". This fable teaches the useful lesson that in an imperfect world, work is rewarded and laziness punished. In this fable as everyone is supposed to know, the ant spends a laborious summer gathering its winter store, while the grasshopper spends its time singing in the sun. When winter comes, the ant is comfortably provided for and the grasshopper has an empty food store. When the grasshopper goes to the ant and begs for a little food, the ant answers that she won´t give him any.
Children in general lack the importance of moral sense towards work. In this story the main character´s sympathies were with the grasshopper. He couldn´t avoid thinking about his fable when once he saw George Ramsay having lunch alone at a restaurant looking as if the burden of the whole world sat on his shoulders. Inmmediately he suspected that Tom, George´s brother, had been causing trouble to him again and unfortunately this was so.
Tom had begun his life decently enough. He had a job, a wife and two children. But one day he announced that he didn´t like work and that he wasn´t suited for marriage. So he left his wife and his office with the little money he had, and spent two happy years in various capitals of Europe.
After he had spent all his money, he started borrowing. He made friends easily. Tom always said that the money spent on necessities was boring and the money spent on luxuries was amusing.
On the other hand, George was a serious and respectable man. Several times George gave Tom considerable sums of money so that he could make a fresh start. Instead, Tom bought a motor-car and very nice jewellery. Once Tom nearly went to prison. This cost George a great trouble and five hundred pounds to settle the affair. For twenty years Tom gambled, was surrounded by pretty girls, dressed beautifully and ate in expensive restaurants. He was 46 but looked like 35. He was incredibly charming and an amusing companion.
Poor George was only a year older than his brother and looked 60. He had never taken more than a fortnight´s holiday in the year, he worked all day, he was honest and industrious, he had a good wife and four daughters. He planned to retire at 57 to a little house in the country. By that time Tom perhaps would have got into the hands of the police. But to George´s surprise, he came to know that Tom had engaged to a woman old enough to be his mother. She had died and left everything to him. Half a million pounds, a yacht, a house in London and a house in the country. George thought this was not fair. While listening to George, the story-teller laughed out loud and almost fell on the floor at George´s furious face. George never forgave him. But Tom very often invited the story-teller to excellent dinners in his beautiful house and occasionally borrowed very small amounts of money, just from force of habit.
