The strange death of Teesside crabs

WILL STONE speaks to film director JEANIE FINLAY about her campaigning new film that explores the ongoing devastation of wildlife and livelihoods on Teesside

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WHEN Jeanie Finlay’s mother posted a photograph on the family’s shared photo folder, it showed her sea-swimming friends holding a homemade placard. It read: “Why did the crabs die?”

“She’s not a protester,” Jeanie says. “I’ve never seen her do anything like it before. I thought, even the mums are protesting. I need to find out more.”

That photo led the Teesside-born director to Stan Rennie, the charismatic and colourful Hartlepool fisherman, and to filming her tenth feature, All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea.

The documentary traces the mass die-off of crabs and lobsters on the north-east coast that the government wants closed, and the grinding campaign by fishermen to find out why.

Stan, a real Loachian character, is the kind of figure a Ken Loach film is built around: a working man with no airs whose decency becomes a political force. The difference is that Loach mainly casts actors while Stan is the real thing, a ready-made folk hero. He shows real care and concern for his fellow fishermen, most of whom, like himself, have had their livelihoods ruined as a result of the die-offs.

Jeanie describes him as “an incredibly generous man” who “would give you the shirt off his back.”

“Stan’s the man,” she says. “He’s a like one of life’s born caretakers: whether it’s for the sea or whether it’s for its communities.

“It’s not great. I think they lost 70 per cent of the fleet over this. Some people are hanging on.

“Stan will keep on but Stan’s health is not great. He has good days and bad days. On the good days, he will take 140 pots out. It kind of keeps him going.

“But it’s more of a sort of practise rather than anything that is profitable, because the cost of diesel is almost always the same cost as anything he takes.”

The mass crustacean die-off began in autumn 2021, and the cause is still disputed. Defra first blamed a naturally occurring algal bloom, a view government scientists repeated to MPs on the environment committee.

But Dr Gary Caldwell of Newcastle University, commissioned by the North East Fishing Collective, argued that pyridine, a chemical with a long history of release into the Tees, was the culprit. His experiments found it highly toxic to crabs, causing twitching, paralysis and death, and he told MPs it had been found in Tees sediment and in dead crabs.

He suggested that dredging from the development and construction of the Teesside Freeport may have disturbed a “pyridine reservoir” and was a driving factor behind the crustacean die-off. If proven, then this would be yet another example of capitalism devastating the environment in the drive to build a tax-break freeport for super-rich corporations.

But Defra rejected this and replied that pyridine can form in crustaceans after death and had not been detected in the river since 2018.

Former Tory environment secretary Therese Coffey considered the case officially closed and ruled out further government investigations.

“When Therese Coffey closed the investigation, it’s done,” Jeanie says. “But it’s not done for the people that live on the coast.”

The fight does indeed go on. The fishermen have won a small victory in that a 10-year dredging licence for the Tees is under review.

Dr Simon Gibbon, who brought a successful judicial review challenge, highlighted inadequate environmental impact assessments, unassessed industrial contamination (such as PAHs and PCBs) and concerns over seal pup mortalities.

The latter is also addressed in the film in the form of the intrepid Dr Sue Wilson, of Tara Seal Research, who tracks and studies the rising sickness and increasing deaths in the local seal population, which are directly linked to the crustacean die-offs.

But the fishermen must now submit further objections and evidence of impact by November 3 as part of a new public consultation into the re-evaluation of the dredging licence.

Jeanie explains: “The default position in the Tees is any dredge material is dumped six miles out at sea. And that should be the last option, not the first.

“I think there needs to be caution. If seals are dying from chemicals that were banned in the 1980s… I mean that material hasn’t been put there recently.

“The question I would ask is how the seals ingested materials that were banned over 40 years ago?”

A community-led crowdfunding campaign by the North East Fishing Collective is also seeking to raise £100,000 to fund independent scientific research into the die-offs as the battle for truth continues.

The film has qualified for the Oscars and will screen at the Doc Stories festival in San Francisco in November.

It has been longlisted for the Best Feature Documentary award at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) 2026.

For more information on screenings and how to donate to the fishermen and their fundraiser visit glimmerama.com, facebook.com and crowdfunder.co.uk  

All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea will be in cinemas from Friday October 23

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