Now,  Stella Mercer interviews photojournalist Estelle Greenshaw. Check the transcription below as you will have to do the second activity after listening.

STELLA:

Pollution of our seas is easy to overlook: they seem so vast that it's usually a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'. But someone who is deeply concerned is photojournalist Estelle Greenshaw, who has just produced a wonderful new book of photos. Called The Sea: Sink or Swim?, it contrasts the terrible effects of mankind with the beauty and riches of the sea, a sea we can – alas – no longer call 'eternal'.

Estelle, welcome to the programme. Now, what was the starting idea for your book?

ESTELLE:

Well, it started when I was on holiday one March in Alaska. I was taking photos of the fantastic coastline there – it's astonishingly beautiful, you know, wild, completely unspoiled. There's an abundance of wildlife – sea birds, seals, sea otters, even killer whales. Then, while I was there the Exxon Valdez, a giant supertanker, went aground in Prince William Sound.

STELLA:

Yes, I remember that. It caused terrible pollution didn't it?

ESTELLE:

Yes. In less than five hours more than 10 million gallons of oil poured into one of the cleanest waterways in the world. Nine hundred miles of unspoiled coastline are estimated to have been damaged. We'll never know precisely how many animals were affected, but it's believed that hundreds of thousands of birds died. Millions of fish were poisoned; the nine resident killer whales have disappeared. And fifteen hundred sea otters are thought to have been killed.

STELLA:

And here are your photos of this. A sort of Before and After. The contrast is shocking.

ESTELLE:

Well, it's meant to be shocking. The photo on the left page shows a stretch of coastline in Prince William Sound. You can see how beautiful it is.

STELLA:

And then on the right, a beach covered – and I mean covered, carpeted  –  in oil. And this at the front, poor thing, what is it?

ESTELLE:

That's a baby sea otter. You can hardly see it under the oil. When the oil gets into their fur, you know, they either drown or die of cold. But this particular individual – I happen to know – was rescued.

STELLA:

One little life spared ...