SIR: I quite liked Geoffrey Luck’s piece “Keeping a Weather Eye Open” (April 2008). It’s just a pity that some of his statements were not better researched. El Niño does indeed bring drier than average conditions to Eastern Australia but in the Eastern Pacific it interrupts the cold, nutrient-rich upwellings that provide for “bumper anchovy catches to the fishermen of Peru”. In El Niño conditions, warmer water, moist onshore winds and low nutrient levels decimate anchovies; seals and sea birds starve along with Peruvian fishermen. If Luck is right about what “every school child knows”, it’s a shame they’ve all…