Faxed drawing of UK shipping forecast regions

Paul Elliman, 2002, 31.8 x 23.5 cm

Earlier this year, a 90,000 square mile area of the Atlantic Ocean was phased out of a list of sea areas that surround the British Isles. As a BBC news report told us at the time: “The name Finisterre — deriving from the Spanish ‘finis terre,’ meaning the end of the earth — is also used by Spain for a different area of the sea and they asked Britain to come up with a new one.” They did, and FitzRoy was introduced on 4 January 2002. These “sea areas”— named for the shallow banks, traditionally used as fishing grounds — are covered by the Met Office Shipping Forecast, a weather report prepared by the UK Meteorological Office and broadcast four times a day by BBC radio.

– “A Late Evening in the Future (part one),” Paul Elliman, Dot Dot Dot #5, 2002