How is the Essex Coast measured

[dunedin]

Several questions:

2. How long does a rock have to be before it is called an island?

As Antarctic Pilot so succinctly advises, it depends on the definition.

To get a manageable list of Scottish Islands, the late Hamish Hassell-Smith defined his “islands” as requiring to be
- 40 hectares or bigger; and
- entirely surrounded by water at lowest astronomical tide and to which there is no permanent means of dry access (ie no bridge or causeway).

By this definition I think there are currently 166 “islands” in Scotland,
- 106 on the West
- 59 on the North, including Orkneys and Shetlands
- just one on the entire East coast.
Clearly the list is getting shorter, as places like Skye, Scalpay, Eriskay etc have had bridges or causeways built since his first book.

Always wondered how many islands the rest of the UK would have using this definition? Would it reach double figures? Rathlin Island, Isle of Wight, and what else over 40ha?

 

[tillergirl]

I recall somebody said that there were hundreds of islands in Essex but noone knew where the number came from.

I do know how long a piece of string is, though. Someone, years ago in the office, was saying something about something about summat was as long as a piece of string. It so happened I had a piece of string on my desk so I took it to the map and laid the string on the scale. And it was clear it was 70 miles. Why not? ?

 

[Tomahawk]

I don't think so. Unless of course your definition of a District is not a council area.

Western Isles. or mainland Argyll and Bute. I think.

Administrative area of Maldon District Council.
N bank of the Crouch and the entire Blackwater

 

[AntarcticPilot]

As Antarctic Pilot so succinctly advises, it depends on the definition.

To get a manageable list of Scottish Islands, the late Hamish Hassell-Smith defined his “islands” as requiring to be
- 40 hectares or bigger; and
- entirely surrounded by water at lowest astronomical tide and to which there is no permanent means of dry access (ie no bridge or causeway).

By this definition I think there are currently 166 “islands” in Scotland,
- 106 on the West
- 59 on the North, including Orkneysand Shetlands
- just one on the entire East coast.
Clearly the list is getting shorter, as places like Skye, Scalpay, Eriskay etc have had bridges or causeways built since his first book.

Always wondered how many islands the rest of the UK would have using this definition? Would it reach double figures? Rathlin Island, Isle of Wight, and what else over 40ha?

The serious point hidden in my flippant answer is that without a definition like that of Hamish Haswell-Smith, there are an infinite number of islands, down to things like a single grain of sand that happens to intersect the waterline. I like the definition Hamish gives - it is practical and acknowledges the problem! On the Scottish West Coast, I'd tend towards defining an island as one with the cell of a Celtic monk - but in most cases, it'd include all of the ones defined by Hamish.

With my geologist hat on, the bit about the North Sea is that the northern part (north of the Dogger Bank) is much older than the Southern North Sea, from the Dogger Bank to the Straits of Dover. But all epicontinental seas are ephemeral in geological terms. The North Sea does seem to be a genuine geological feature; shallow water deposits go back a long way; to the Carboniferous if my rather rusty memory of the days when I did geological interpretation of seismic surveys in the early days of North Sea oil and gas exploration serves me. Most of the oil and gas are trapped beneath an evaporate (rock salt etc ) sequence called the Zechstein, which is pre Cretaceous. Evaporites are produced in shallow, hypersaline basins such as the Dead Sea.

PS I just checked, and the Zechstein is Upper Permian.

 

[LittleSister]

The North Sea is very new. It was generally known in the UK as the German Sea, or the German Ocean, until that suddenly fell out of fashion just over a hundred years ago, for some reason.

Antarctic Pilot has the gen on how old the underlying rocks are, but how old are the molecules of water in the North Sea?

 

[AntarcticPilot]

The North Sea is very new. It was generally known in the UK as the German Sea, or the German Ocean, until that suddenly fell out of fashion just over a hundred years ago, for some reason.

Antarctic Pilot has the gen on how old the underlying rocks are, but how old are the molecules of water in the North Sea?

I think that Hydrogen came into being in the first seconds after the Big Bang. Oxygen a bit later. Conditions would have allowed water to form at about 10-17 million years after the Big Bang. So, potentially, the waster in the North Sea is only slightly younger than the Universe as a whole.

I just checked and the Southern North Sea was flooded most recently in about 6000 BCE - possibly inundated as a relut of the Storegga Tsunami in 6,200 BCE

 

[tillergirl]

I just checked and the Southern North Sea was flooded most recently in about 6000 BCE - possibly inundated as a relut of the Storegga Tsunami in 6,200 BCE

Was a newer sea created? Ignore the political name of it or the existence of water. Was a newer sea ever geologically created?

 

[johnalison]

I think that Hydrogen came into being in the first seconds after the Big Bang. Oxygen a bit later. Conditions would have allowed water to form at about 10-17 million years after the Big Bang. So, potentially, the waster in the North Sea is only slightly younger than the Universe as a whole.

I just checked and the Southern North Sea was flooded most recently in about 6000 BCE - possibly inundated as a relut of the Storegga Tsunami in 6,200 BCE

It doesn’t necessarily follow that the oxygen contributing to the water in the North Sea was formed early in the universe. It might have been formed several billion years later. I can’t offhand remember if it is formed in stars or in supernovae but in either case it could be modern-ish.

I do know, because my school friends told me so, that every glass of water you drink contains at least one molecule from the cup of hemlock that Socrates drank.

 

[Aquaboy]

and every drop of water you drink has been......errrr how shall I say......"past" a good few times as well......

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Was a newer sea created? Ignore the political name of it or the existence of water. Was a newer sea ever geologically created?

The Salton Sea in California comes to mind - the result of an engineering mistake in 1905 - is probably the most recent "sea". That's about a tenth the size of the whole of the North Sea, so perhaps a quarter to a third of the area flooded in around 6000 BCE.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

and every drop of water you drink has been......errrr how shall I say......"past" a good few times as well......

One of the gruesome facts regurgitated by my lecturers was that the river Cam downstream of Cambridge has passed through human kidneys some improbable number of times. To bring a boaty note into it, when I had the Cox's privilege of being thrown into the river by a successful crew, I took care to keep my mouth shut!