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Even trace amounts of oil could do massive damage to marine life in the Galapagos, suggests a paper in Nature this week (vol 417, p 607). Martin Wikelski of Princeton University, New Jersey, found that 62 per cent of marine iguanas living on Santa Fe island died during 2001. He and his team think that a tanker spill is to blame, even though most of the oil was washed away from the islands by wind and currents. The oil killed off bugs in the iguanas’ guts that let them digest seaweed, they say, forcing them to starve to death.