Vol. 26 No. 18 · 23 September 2004
pages 34-35 | 3073 words
Diary
James Hamilton-Paterson
Early one morning two Februaries ago, I stood in shirtsleeves in the tiny bay of Crinan in the extreme west of Argyll. The sun was brilliant in a rinsed blue sky. On a nearby islet an unmoving white heron might have been a plaster model. Behind it shores and islands widened to the horizon. Everything was still. Before long the first clouds had appeared, and within fifteen minutes the islands had vanished. Last to disappear behind the grey squalls hissing across the beach was the heron.
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[*] Christensen et al. in Fish and Fisheries (Vol. IV, Issue 1, March 2003).
[†] Trawler: A Journey through the North Atlantic (Penguin, 339 pp., £7.99, June, 0 14 027668 8).
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Letters
Vol. 26 No. 21 · 4 November 2004
From John M.W. Scott
In his essay on the ocean's resilience to ecological damage from oil spills and sunken shipping, James Hamilton-Paterson says that in comparison with the total volume of the oceans, a million tons of crude oil 'are as nothing' (LRB, 23 September). He overlooks the damage caused by the relatively small amounts of oil discharged when ships empty their bilges at sea, particularly in the North-West Atlantic. It does untold damage to the numerous pelagic seabirds indigenous to the area: murres, puffins and gannets. These birds, coated with bilge oil, end up either dead or in a wretched state washed up on the shores of Newfoundland and the Canadian-American eastern seaboard.
John M.W. Scott
St John’s, Newfoundland
Vol. 26 No. 24 · 16 December 2004
From Brendan Carroll
Writing about the effect of oil as a pollutant at sea, James Hamilton-Paterson correctly says that a million tons of oil is a small amount compared with the total volume of the oceans (LRB, 23 September). However, crude oil has the ability to spread out on sea water, eventually to form a film which is only a few molecules thick. The correct comparison is, therefore, not between the volume of the oil and the total volume of the oceans, but rather between the area of such an oil film and the total surface area of the oceans. A rough calculation suggests that these two areas are, in fact, of the same magnitude (a billion square kilometres). On this basis, the spillage of a million tons of oil is indeed a matter for ecological concern.
Brendan Carroll
University of Manchester
