Our islands of Britain and Ireland enjoy an extensive and highly convoluted shoreline, sometimes sandy, sometimes rocky, but always full of wildlife interest. Many of us enjoyed rock-pooling as children, finding shrimps, crabs and little fish to reward our curiosity, and being intrigued by the huge range of marine life on and under the stones. Also for many these childhood pleasures have been extended into adult life with the help of wetsuits, snorkels and face masks, and thus our appreciation of the richness of the marine biodiversity on or just off our shores has been strengthened.

But some new developments threaten this region and its rich ecology, especially the hazards of oil spills resulting from the constant use of our offshore waters by passing tankers. Many of us have clear images of the Torrey Canyon disaster of Cornwall in the late 1960s, the wreck of the MV Braer in Shetland in 1993, and of the Sea Empress in Wales in 1996. And with the benefit of hindsight we now know that in some of these situations the remedy proved more injurious than the initial problem, as the over-use of detergent to disperse the oil after a spill can do more harm than good. In particular it killed major grazers such as limpets, thus altering the ecological balance of the shore. Estimates are that sprayed areas took 10 years to return to a normal ecological community, whereas the unsprayed shores recovered in only two years. The insult to the shorelines proved to be only part of the problem, as hundreds or thousands of oiled shags, guillemots and puffins were washed up on the beaches following exposure to the spilt oil at sea.