In the last week of January, 2006, sea birds who had gathered near the north-western coast of Estonia found themselves in something awful that burned their eyes and made feathers so sticky that they lost their usual watertightness. In the course of few days thousands of birds perished.

Altogether, 20 000 – 30 000 birds perished in the oil pollution in Northwest Estonia. Some bird species which winter in Estonia number only few thousand. If the disaster had happened on Saaremaa’s coast, wherePolysticta stelleri nests, it could have been the end of their habitation in Estonia.

The volume of naval transport in the Baltic Sea is increasing from year to year, as do the oil shipments. Occurrence of a new and more serious oil disaster is regrettably only a matter of time. Although the oil disaster in winter 2006 was probably the most severe with its ecological consequences in the history of Estonia, it was not even the biggest with the quantity of oil spilled.

One should not forget that from the global perspective there is nothing extraordinary in the oil disaster in north-western Estonia in 2006. The history of world’s oil transit knows much larger catastrophes with regard to oil tons and victims. For some people there is nothing to worry about – who cares about some ducks?! Oil means good business and on the whole “those greens” want to drive us back to caves.

Will it stay like this that a part of us is polluting the sea and earns profit from it, while others are saving birds doomed to perish? Oil does not kill only the birds in the sea. Also less visible sea creatures get their share and the gradual destruction of the marine ecosystem might become fatal for all of us.