NE England's Fishery Collapsing - Lobsters, Crabs, Octopus, Even Rock Sponges Dying, Seals Starving

[hatrack]

It’s the whole ecosystem – just gone in that area,” said James Cole. The eighth or ninth generation of Whitby fishers in his family, Cole has never seen anything like the death and decimation of marine life that has plagued the waters since autumn, from coral, crabs, seals and sea birds. He has witnessed “nothing on that scale or that magnitude to cause that type of damage”.

The first worrying report was in October, from fishers in South Gare, at the mouth of the River Tees in Redcar and Cleveland, along England’s north-east coast. “Their lobsters died,” recounts Cole, as he unloads a meagre catch from his boat, Good Intent, at Whitby fish market. Then Cole heard from anglers in the same area looking for shore crabs, normally easily caught in rockpools or shallow waters. “They couldn’t find none, they were all dead.” More worryingly, says Cole: “From there, day on day, it spread up along the coast with the prevailing flood tide.”

EDIT

We’ve seen dead octopus, all varieties of crab, lobster, dead men’s fingers – a soft sponge. They take some scraping off a rock … but we even saw them on the beaches,” he said. Sally Bunce, a seal rescue volunteer, has seen a sharp increase in emaciated grey seal pups – sometimes below their birth weight – washing ashore in recent months. Many have to be put down because they lack the blubber to survive at sea. At first, she attributed it to the aftermath of Storm Arwen, but is increasingly convinced it is linked to the loss of marine life.

EDIT

Amid concerns that the deaths could have been caused by contaminated sediment dredged from the River Tees and dumped into the ocean, Defra said it is “unlikely that chemical pollution, sewage or infectious aquatic animal diseases were the cause of the deaths”. An independent expert, commissioned by the North East Fishing collective, found evidence linking the deaths to pyridine.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/10/my-heart-is-broken-death-of-marine-life-is-devastating-englands-fishing-industry

[Scrivener7]

1. Oh, God. This is heartbreaking.

[Fullduplexxx]

2. When you treat the ocean like a toilet.....

[2naSalit]

3. It has been known...

For decades that these fisheries would collapse if not allowed protection from us. It was spoken of when I was a kid more than half a century ago. I stopped eating seafood a long time ago, not that it made any difference.