‘It sounds silly but I thought it was a person in the water waving,” says Kurt Lander, skipper(船长) of the Yellowfin charter boat, based out of Brighton. But when he grabbed his binoculars, he realised the fluttering(扑动的，飘动的) movement he had noticed in the middle of the Channel shipping lane was a pair of sunfish(翻车鱼).
“听起来很傻，但我以为那是水里有人在挥手，”布莱顿的 Yellowfin 包船船长库尔特·兰德说。但当他抓起双筒望远镜时，他意识到自己在英吉利海峡航道中央注意到的扑动身影，其实是一对翻车鱼。
The huge fish were lying on their sides and flapping(拍打，摆动) their fins. “Apparently, they do it as a visual attraction to birds,” he says. “They’re trying to get the birds to eat the parasites(寄生虫) off them.”
这些巨大的鱼侧躺着，拍打着鱼鳍。“显然，它们这样做是为了吸引鸟类的注意，”他说，“它们想让鸟吃掉身上的寄生虫。”
Lander has seen the huge fish with their unusual round bodies before. But the difference is that those that he spotted this year are part of a surge(激增，猛增) in sightings of the species off British shores this summer, probably as a result of(由于，因为) a marine heatwave(海洋热浪).
兰德以前也见过这种体型巨大、身体圆润的鱼。但不同的是，他今年看到的这些鱼是今年夏天英国海岸附近该物种目击事件激增的一部分，这可能是海洋热浪的结果。