Sable Island: The Strange Origins and Curious History of a Dune Adrift in the Atlantic

Much like his earlier book "Water," de Villiers has created a pleasing account of the history of Sable Island as well as the geologic structure that creates such an unusual island. HIs prose is clean and efficient, yet captivating. While not terribly technical, "Sable Island" is a good read for anyone interested in environmentalism, biology, geology, or oceanography.

Sable island, something out of a myth, it is thirty miles long and barely a mile wide at points, a smiley face shaped sand down off the coast of Nova Scotia, the graveyard of hundreds of ships. It is an eiry place, the kind of thing that should'nt exist, a natural marvel. It also has a herd of wild horses too boot. This well written and fascinating history tells both the natural history of the island and the history of the wrecks and disasters around it. The island has shifted throughout history, since it is just a large sand bar, but this book brings it to life. For anyone interested in maritime history or the sea or natural phenomena, this is a wonderful reag. Seth J. Frantzman

I've not read many books that have done such a respectable job in bundling the past, with its deadly history, the present, encapsulating research and discoveries, and the portents of the future. Often inhospitable, shifting, and ever dangerous we may be losing a piece of naval navigation lore and beauty to the relentless re-shaping by the ocean's fury and the, seemingly, irreversible onslaught of global warming that will eventually raise the ocean levels enough to shroud an historic place of incomprable beauty, fear, and destruction. A must read for "The Perfect Storm" crowd, those interested in maritime lore, and everyone who can 'see' the effects of global warming. Enjoy!

Authors Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle have produced an interesting book on the history of the Canadian island known as Sable Island. One could be forgiven I believe for thinking the place uninteresting and unworthy of a nearly 250 page book, the island described by some as a "desolate and barren and storm-swept sandbank in the North Atlantic." A crescent shaped island, with arms at east and west reaching to the north, the center bulging towards the south, it is the last lonely outpost of land between Canada and Europe (or Bermuda). Located a hundred miles south of Nova Scotia, it is a mere thirty miles long and at its widest less than a mile wide. A treeless place, it is an island of dunes - some bald, most covered in vegetation - and small ponds. Not a particularly high island, on the north beach dunes reach 85 feet in height, but on the south beach they are rarely more than 8 feet high, considerably shorter than some of the waves that occur during the many gales and storms of the region (though waves that rarely reach the island directly - at least at that height - owing to numerous sand bars miles out to sea around the island). What fame the island has is generally not from it scenery; located on major shipping lands, in an area that is frequently prone to storms and fog, and often not very visible far out to sea, the island has been described as the deadliest piece of real estate in Canada, with hundreds of wrecks having taking place in its waters, fully ten wrecks for every mile of coastline. An additional dangerous feature of the island are its spits located out to the east and west (washed over too often for much in the way of vegetation) which extend between four and nine miles out, as well as the submerged east and west bars, which extend out to eighteen miles - though a massive storm can radically change the size of the spits and bars overnight. The authors spent a great deal of time discussing the geology of the island, introducing many concepts of that science. Sable Island is an island of sand - not rocks, shale, slate, boulders, or really much in the way of soil - as indeed the name Sable is the French word for sand. Geologists have pegged the island's age at around 15,000 years and they believe the island represents a by-product of the glaciers that once covered Canada, that originally Sable Island was the terminal moraine of a glacier's advance (though much of that original sand has since been moved by wind and wave). The island has not been a static one, changing in size and shape numerous times over human history. Many believe that the island will eventually vanish, its sand vanishing into the depths of the Gully, a huge canyon cut in the continental shelf that almost touches the tip of the island's eastern bar, massive in size (largest submarine canyon in the western North Atlantic at 25 miles long, 10 miles wide, and 8,000 feet deep). There is a great deal of debate over whether the island is moving east, moving west,