Death and decimation: Whitby devastated by declining marine life
“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.”
Four months on, crab and lobster fishers from Hartlepool to Scarborough report that their catches are a tenth of what they would normally expect at this time of year. This is a brutal blow to the coastline that is home to the largest lobster and brown crab fishery in Europe. More than 3,000 tonnes of shellfish have landed in the three main ports of Bridlington, Scarborough and Whitby, Yorkshire.
“My heart is broken at the scenes of devastation,” says Stan Rennie. A Hartlepool-based commercial fisher, he received his first fishing boat for his thirteenth birthday.
He contrasts waters which were “rich fishing grounds only five months ago” to the present day. “There’s nowt to catch. Fishermen are relying on savings, to try and pay the bills and boat maintenance, they could be staring unemployment in the
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