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The Minch, the narrow oil tanker route between mainland Scotland and
the Outer Hebrides, is the most likely site for the next major oil slick
disaster in British waters, say government scientists. ‘An accident here
would kill even more birds at sea than the Shetland disaster,’ says Mark
Tasker of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) in Scotland. ‘It
is a sinuous channel, in places only a mile wide, where there is a serious
risk of a major pollution disaster.’ Earlier this week the government announced
a second inquiry into the environmental safety of tanker routes. Since the
mid-1980s, the JNCC and its predecessor the Nature Conservancy Council have
pushed for the government to ban oil tankers from the Minch and the sea
south of Shetland. ‘But the government said it wanted to see if an advisory
system would work. We don’t yet know whether the Braer kept the recommended
10 miles from Sumburgh Head. But, though the government keeps no figures,
we know from fishermen that oil tankers frequently pass through the Minch
against official advice.’ Currently there are no shipping channels where
tankers are excluded because of conservation concerns, says Tasker.

Among the most important wildlife areas along the Minch are Shiant Island,
the second biggest colony of puffins in Britain and a series of internationally
important bird breeding colonies. In winter densities of birds in the Minch
are among the highest of any marine area in Britain.

Tasker says that the Sumburgh Head spill bears a striking resemblance
to a near miss at St Kilda off northwest Scotland, one of the most important
bird breeding grounds in the British Isles. An oil tanker lost power off
the island in storms in December 1981 and drifted within 3 kilometres of
the island.

The JNCC is angry that its advice to curtail the oil industry in the
interests of conservation is being repeatedly ignored by the government.
In July last year, the body, which is the senior statutory adviser to the
government on conservation issues, complained publicly that 51 new concessions
for oil exploration had been offered ‘against our advice’.

Exploration licences ‘could threaten internationally important sea bird
sites on the cliffs of Caithness and Sutherland, and near Grassholm and
Skomer islands off the coast of Dyfed,’ it said.