As reported in the Caithness Courier on Wednesday, the Highland Council and other bodies and individuals have now cleared up most of the mess.

It was only a matter of time before a significant oil-spill hit a Caithness beach; in this case, from the Beatrice oilfield, operated by Talisman Energy (UK) Ltd. The company has agreed to pay the full cost of the clean-up operation but, as far as I can determine, has yet to express any regret for being the cause of the pollution.

Reiss beach was a favourite place for family walks when we lived in Caithness. We would park on the dunes by the golf club and walk north towards the mouth of the River Wester and the white tower of Keiss Castle, then turn and walk back again with the stark finger of Ackergill Tower and dark ruins of Castle Sinclair Girnigoe beckoning us on.

On hot summer days, the children would play and swim in the shallows. Even in midwinter, with the sea roaring up the beach, there was always something to see and do. The only time I have ever seen a great northern diver was during one such walk. The magnificent bird was floating majestically in the bay, a few yards from the shore. Blizzards of visiting snow buntings invariably greeted us at the mouth of the Wester.

It looks, so far, as though our seabirds have not been affected by the oil spillage – which is a great relief, given that at this time of year the Old Red Sandstone cliffs of Caithness are crowded with nesting birds: razorbill, eider duck, fulmar, guillemot, kittiwake, puffin and shag, many of which nest in the vicinity of Sinclair's Bay.

Scotland's seabird colonies face more than enough problems as it is, simply trying to find sufficient food to feed to their young, without having to cope with oil-polluted waters. Many seabirds feed on small fish at the bottom of the food chain, such as sand eels, but intensive commercial fishing has decimated natural populations of these fish.

Thousands of seabirds have been washed ashore in recent years and there is every indication that they have starved to death simply because there is nothing for them to eat. Breeding cliffs, particularly in Shetland and Orkney, have been badly affected and many are now often devoid of their usual throng of squawking, arguing birds, jealously guarding nesting areas and rearing their young.

The clean-up under way on the beach at Wester after the oil spill at the end of last week. Robert MacDonald 01955 602741

Officialdom trots out the same old excuses to explain the lack of sand eels: high water temperatures, global warming, cyclical variations in stock density... everything other than that which is most obvious to most reasonable people – the fact that if you remove millions and millions of tonnes of the fish that seabirds rely upon for survival then seabirds will die.

The greatest consequence and tragedy of this unsustainable rape of the base of the food chain is that the fish caught are mashed up to provided protein and oil primarily to feed to farm fish – and it takes approximately three tonnes of these small creatures to produce just one tonne of farmed fish.

And not only seabirds suffer. Other species rely on sand eels for survival, including cod and mackerel. Removing their food source brings them ever closer to the void of extinction.

My wife Ann and I used to regularly visit a magnificent natural "seat", weathered out of the sheer face of 80ft high cliffs in a geo near Noss Head lighthouse. From this vantage point we could watch freshly laundered black-and-white male eider duck fishing in the clear waters below whilst stiff-winged fulmar glided by, riding the wind flowing up over the cliff-top. Most exciting of all was watching a colony of puffins come and go from their thrift-bedecked burrows at the edge of the abyss, bearing neatly-arranged rows of sand eels in their firework-coloured beaks for hungry nestlings. The privilege of being able to do so is one of my enduring memories of the many happy hours we spent in Caithness.

The sea gave us birth and has sustained human existence for millions of years. Today, through sheer commercial greed, we are destroying that great gift. If a Caithness farmer, or any Caithness businessman, caused pollution on such a vast scale he wouldn't be currently dishing out anodyne press statements – he would most probably be behind bars. Which is exactly where I honestly believe those who mucked up Sinclair's Bay should be now.

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