It all started with crabs – Part 3: Battle lines drawn in the sand (December 2021 to March 2022)
By Tessa Bunney on 20 April 2023So now we arrive at the third part of this story, which is where I try to explain what happened in the Spring of 2022, after DEFRA became increasingly unwilling to communicate, and locals and members of the North East Fishing Collective began to feel like they were being stone walled. As you might imagine, it’s a bit complicated, because a lot of it is about why DEFRA was behaving as they were, and to move the story forwards, I have to take a couple of steps back to explain a few things.
Now every good story starts somewhere, doesn’t it? Often springing up from an unusual event, or a quirk of fate that sets someone on a path to discover who they really are; and this story is not short of characters competing to be either the villain or the protagonist. In fact, there are so many characters vying for the lead roles, and the story is so often clouded by layers of smoke and mirrors that I still find it difficult to know who’s on which side, who is telling the truth, and even figure out where the story started.
Although for those of us who set foot on the beaches between Hartlepool and Saltburn on the morning of 24th October 2021, the question of where the story started is simple; it started with crabs. Thousands and thousands of the poor creatures either dead or dying on the sand. But almost two years later, if I was asked to write a script for ‘Teesside crab deaths – what REALLY happened?’ I might start the story somewhere else because there are so many potential options.
Months earlier perhaps, in a low-lit private London club where the dark business forces of local ‘entrepreneurs’ Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney met with high level political heavyweights of the Conservative Government to thrash out Freeport land agreements, and the backbone of the story would be about money, political corruption and disregard for the environment?
Or how about in a Hartlepool kitchen where local fisherman Stan Rennie, his daughter Sarah and their family friends witnessed hundreds of years of fishing tradition destroyed overnight and joined with other local fishermen to form the North East Fishing Collective and began a fight to uncover the truth?
Stan Rennie, lobster fisherman, Hartlepool, October 2022
Or maybe the moment in Autumn 2021 when the two dredgers belonging to PD Ports (the Heortnesse and the Cleveland County) simultaneously broke down, leading PD Ports to hire in the UKD Orca and squeeze 6% of its annual dredging quota into 10 days to get their money’s worth?
Or perhaps even with the relentless stubbornness of local marine mammal medic Sally Bunce, whose passion for the planet and the environment gave her a voice which became louder the more the authorities tried to silence it?
Sally Bunce on the ‘Sarah Beth’ whilst collecting sediment samples on River Tees Estuary with Hartlepool fishermen, Paul and Jamie Widdowfield, January 2023
The thing is, when a story goes through as many changes of direction as this one, everyone who has been touched by it ends up with their own starting point; a specific moment when their suspicion, or interest was aroused and they became a participant rather than an observer, and once enough people came together and the questions being asked gained momentum, particularly about whether the Government sanctioned ‘investigation’ into the cause of the mass extinction event was as detailed or transparent as we were told to believe, it became a story which travelled both backwards, and forwards at the same time, driven by one main question. Why?
- Why wouldn’t DEFRA listen to Tim Deere-Jones’ report?
- Why were they displaying so little curiosity about Pyridine levels in the Saltburn crabs?
- Why were they so unwilling to consider dredging as a cause?
- Why did it feel like things were being covered up?
Which takes things full circle for me, because having lived in Marske since Spring 2021 and being one of the people who stumbled across the devastation on October 24th, my story definitely started with crabs, and everything else (the disbelief, the suspicion, the disappointment, the anger) came later, and went hand in hand with trying to find the answers to those questions; and at this point it’s worth explaining a few things about the crabs affected, how they died, and the species which seemed to dodge the carnage because as with everything in this story, it matters, and these facts are really important because they piqued lots of local curiosity, and we naively assumed they would pique the curiosity of the Government Agencies assigned to investigate too.
According the Marine Life Information Network there are 38 crab species in the UK, and the mass extinction event in October 2021 was mostly made up of four species listed below which (with the exception of Hermit crabs) are the most common crabs found in the UK.
As mentioned in our previous blog post, the October 2021 wash-up wasn’t limited to crabs. Hundreds of lobsters were also caught up in the carnage, along with a variety of bottom dwelling species (squat lobsters, a puffer fish, flat-fish to name a few), but interestingly there were also species which seemed to dodge the consequences of whatever had happened, and we know this because of the first Environment Agency report written almost 2 weeks before the 21stOctober wash-up which you can read HERE, and for two more specific reasons.
The first reason is because of the creatures which didn’t wash up. The most obvious (with the exception of bottom feeders), being fish. There were almost no cod, whiting, lamprey, ling, sprats, pipefish or any other free-swimming fish washed up (probably because they could swim away). In fact, a few months after the event I was told a story by someone who’d been told by a local fisherman with 50 years’ experience, that on the night of the 23rd October 2021 he’d been on his boat not far out from Saltburn and had seen something he’d never seen before. Hundreds of lobsters swimming on the surface in the opposite direction to where the UKD Orca had dredged. I have no idea if this is true or just a good fisherman’s tale, but after the discoveries of the last two years, all I can say is it wouldn’t surprise me!
The second avenue of information is provided by a handful of locals who regularly snorkel and dive South Gare lighthouse (a land spit extending out from the south bank of the Tees), the tide pools at South Gare called the German Charlies, and Redcar Scars (Craggy rock strips that run out to sea from Redcar). Their first-hand accounts give us a clear picture of the immediate effects of the dredging activity undertaken by the UKD Orca (they describe a thick foul smelling silt laid on the seabed, littered with dead and dying carcases of the four crab species listed above), as well as noting some species which appeared to have been unaffected (notably hermit crabs, starfish, winkles, mussels and whelks – see John Lampett’s blog post here).
Now you have to remember that most people who are still involved today in the unofficial investigations into the mass extinction event on 24th October 2021 didn’t know each other beforehand, and found each other after the event via social media. Which is the point where things began to get interesting, because as soon as people started to talk, it became obvious there were some specific symptoms the crabs had displayed as they died.
- Flipping onto their backs
- Convulsions
- Paralysis
- Producing oily mounds of bubbles which surrounded their bodies
Curious right? Certainly curious enough to think that Tim Deere-Jones’s report which highlighted the high levels of Pyridine found in the Saltburn crabs should be reviewed and reconsidered, and that DEFRA should answer questions about why they ignored the Pyridine results the first time around? Well as we know, DEFRA did nothing of the sort and the collective question WHY became a battle cry.
Now, the internet is a powerful research tool, and social media is both a blessing and a curse to communication so it didn’t take much effort to unearth a glaring potential reason which could explain why DEFRA were acting as they were, and now that social media allows direct access to people in power, questions were immediately directed towards the Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, and the Tees Valley Combined Authority, because less than a mile up the river Tees was the site of a yet to be constructed Conservative Government Flagship Project. Teesworks. The first UK Freeport which once constructed would be a feather in the cap of the Levelling up Agenda, and would (allegedly) solve some of the logistical issues caused by Brexit, boost the economy, provide thousands of jobs and regenerate the entire area.
And guess what was required to complete its construction? Yes, you’ve got it, substantial dredging works, and as people used social media to aim questions about the safety of dredging at local Conservative politicians, we got our first taste of the operating methods of the Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, and local MP’s Jacob Young and Simon Clarke. They were defensive, obstructive, antagonistic and damn right rude, and the more we educated ourselves about the Freeport, dredging processes and marine licences, the more it seemed like we’d walked into an alternate universe, a horrible one which none of us liked….
It didn’t take long for battle lines to be drawn in the sand, and for angry exchanges on social media between Ben Houchen and various locals to reach fever pitch, which I personally thought was unhelpful, so I contacted him and arranged a meeting to discuss the situation, and try to calm things down. On 2nd March 2022 Sally Bunce and Joe Redfern (North East Fishing Collective & Whitby Lobster Hatchery) and I (Helen Taylor) met with Ben Houchen and his assistant Rachel Mills and we had an hour and a half of interesting discussion (see minutes here) I think back to that meeting sometimes, and wonder if it could have led anywhere different. If I’d known what I know now I would have tried to do things differently, because I would have liked to have stayed in control of the communication from our side, and given Ben Houchen the opportunity to deliver what he promised, in effect seeing whether he was as good as his word. As it was, communication was wrestled from my hands, and frustrated emails fuelled by fury and mistrust were fired off at a rate of knots so that things quickly descended once again into hostility, and Team Houchen ceased discussion with us. This still saddens me, because I think it was a missed opportunity, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I prefer to think the best of people until they prove me wrong.
Following this meeting, and in addition to the release of Tim Deere-Jones’s Independent report and subsequent behaviour from DEFRA, the North East Fishing Collective were contacted by a renowned Newcastle University marine biology lecturer, Dr Gary Caldwell who wanted to help with further research into the causes of the mass extinction event.
Dr Gary Caldwell, Senior Lecturer in Applied Marine Biology at Newcastle University, February 2023
While at the same time the North East Fishing Collective were approached by The Fish Mongers Company, who offered to fund further independent investigations. The North East Research Group was formed to manage this funding, and after 8 months of research by Gary Caldwell into the effects of Pyridine on crabs, and various related projects by four top Universities in the region (Newcastle, York, Durham and Hull) the results of the research were released at the start of October 2022, and what they had found was shocking.
See our next blog to see what happened during the Summer of 2022, and what happened once the Universities research was released.
Helen Taylor