Sea Changes

By Peter Staler

THE THIN EDGE by Anne W. Simon

Harper & Row; 180 pages; $10

This spring, oil hunters will begin probing the Baltimore Canyon, an ocean-floor site off Atlantic City, N.J. They hope to find 1.4 billion bbl. of oil and nearly 10 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas that may lie beneath the continental shelf. Most energy-hungry Americans hope the oilmen find what they are looking for. Anne Simon will be satisfied if they do not make what she considers a bad situation even worse. A veteran coast watcher, Simon has already written an impassioned plea for the preservation of Martha's Vineyard. In her newest book, she appeals just as ardently for an end to the steady destruction of the world's coastlines.

A seasonal resident of Martha's Vineyard, Simon opens her elegant little book with a look at some of the coastline's natural systems. Sand, she writes, is the basic ingredient of most coasts, and though it appears insubstantial, plays a major role in buffering the land's boundaries from the pounding of the sea. "Sand meets water's force with its natural tendency to move," observes Mrs. Simon. "Its soft answer turns away the sea's wrath." Wet lands--marshes, swamps and coastal grass--also play a part, nourishing every thing from birds to bivalves. They also stabilize shores, absorbing flood water, releasing it slowly, and in the process protecting the land behind them.

These fragile systems are under constant threat. And the situation could further deteriorate as searchers probe the ocean for oil. The fields that may soon be opened in the fertile fishing grounds of Georges Bank, writes Mrs. Simon, will have a 20-year life, during which there is a 91% chance of at least one major spill and near certainty that there will be more than 1,700 "nickel-and-dime" disasters. The public, she laments, seems unconcerned. "The trade-off is almost made -- a viable coast for the plunge offshore, for a few more moments of twilight before the oil lamp goes out, for prolonging the ocean-sink concept until some version of Black Mayonnaise hits us in the face, the nostrils or the gut."

In the '60s such environmental polemics were common and often overstated. Mrs. Simon is quiet and less acrimonious. She makes it clear that the seas and coast lines need not die. She hails the invaluable work that has been done to preserve New York's Jamaica Bay and California's San Francisco Bay, and she applauds new environmental laws aimed at halting destruction of wetlands, banning offshore dumping, regulating shoreline development. But, she warns, even these are not enough. "The record of our action allows some hopes that there may still be flocks of birds flying low over the shore in the 21st century, some hopes for seafood in our diet," writes Mrs. Simon. "But not many." Hers is a tocsin that cannot be sounded often enough.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.