Coral reefs are already appreciated for their beauty. But they provide another, more tangible benefit, too.

　　珊瑚礁因它们的美丽而备受称赞。然而，除此之外，它们还有其他更加实惠的好处。

　　"Every day waves are coming ashore. And of course during storms you might have 20-foot waves. The reef is breaking those waves, essentially dissipating that energy before they hit the shoreline."

　　“海浪每日都在光顾着海滩。在暴风雨期间，你还会遇到20英尺高的巨浪。但这些珊瑚礁会破坏掉这些巨浪，在这些巨浪冲击海岸线之前，它们基本上会消耗掉这些巨浪所带的能量。”

　　Mike Beck, a marine scientist for the Nature Conservancy and U.C. Santa Cruz.

　　迈克.贝克是一名来自自然保护协会及加利福尼亚大学圣克鲁斯分校的海洋科学家。

　　"If we’re to lose just a little bit of our reef—I mean we modeled just losing the topmost meter of reef—storm costs would double."

　　“如果我们失去一丁点珊瑚礁，我是说，我们做了模型进行了模拟实验，去掉珊瑚礁的最顶端部分，暴风雨带来的代价将会翻倍。”

　　Beck and his team used 30 years of wind and wave data, combined with hydrodynamic, ecological and economic models, to figure out what future floods would look like, with shorter reefs. "And you repeat that, all around the world, for all 72,000 kilometers of coral reef coastline."

　　贝克和他的团队利用三十年的风浪数据，结合流体力学、生态学和经济模型，利用很小的珊瑚礁弄清了未来的洪流会是什么样的。“不停的重复同样的工作，跑遍全球总长达72000千米的珊瑚礁海岸线。”

　　Overall, they found that the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and Cuba are the biggest beneficiaries. The details are in the journal Nature Communications.

　　总体来说，他们发现每年由珊瑚礁保护免受洪流之灾而给全球来的经济效益达到了40亿美元。印度尼西亚、菲律宾、马来西亚、墨西哥、以及古巴都是最大的受益者。其中的详细信息刊登在Nature Communications。