On a pale-blue Sunday morning on the foreshore(河滩；前滩) of the River Thames, 40 people are searching for what others have tried to lose. Dotted across a 250-metre stretch under Hammersmith Bridge, they are combing through layers of silt(淤泥；粉砂), seashells and dirty driftwood(浮木；漂流木) to find one of the river’s most stubborn(顽固的；难解决的) problems: wet wipes.
一个淡蓝色的周日清晨，在泰晤士河的河滩上，40个人正在寻找别人试图丢弃的东西。他们散布在汉默史密斯桥下250米长的一段河岸上，翻查层层淤泥、贝壳和脏兮兮的浮木，要找出这条河最顽固的问题之一：湿巾。
“People come and walk here and it looks just like mud, at a distance(从远处；隔一段距离),” says the organiser, Dr Felicity Rhodes. “And then you get closer in and see.”(“可等你走近一看，就看见了。”)
“人们来这里散步，远远看去，这儿就像一片烂泥，”组织者费利西蒂·罗兹博士说，“可等你走近一看，就看见了。”
The dig forms part a citizen science(公民科学；公众参与式科研) project that has tracked sanitary litter(卫生用品垃圾) on the banks of the Thames for nearly a decade. Set up by the environmental charity Thames21, volunteers are recruited to help map out(摸清；绘制；规划) the amount of wipes that are flush(冲（马桶）；冲刷)ed down the toilet and washed up along the river. Findings are added to a database that quantifies plastic pollution on the banks of the Thames.
这次挖掘是公民科学项目的一部分，该项目追踪泰晤士河岸的卫生用品垃圾已近十年。项目由环保慈善机构泰晤士21发起，招募志愿者协助摸清被冲下马桶、又冲上河岸的湿巾数量。调查结果会被录入一个量化泰晤士河岸塑料污染的数据库。