We were fishing in October, not last year, year before, and my fellow fisherman that worked

along the course from Wittby up to Hartley pole fishing with crab pots to catch lobsters

and crabs started to report some very, very strange findings.

The catch rits had absolutely dropped off, they were hauling their pots up with crabs

that were turned upside down and that were twitching, as if they had some sort of nervous

disorder, and slowly day by day this occurred further and further along the coast, and we

got reports from fellow fishermen, and they were finding that all their lobsters that

were in their keep pots were dead.

All the green crabs, which are collected for fishing bait, all dead, and then the devastation

started.

It was absolutely horrendous, there was a wall, four foot, five foot deep, of dead crabs

and lobsters, and all we thought was, oh my lord, that's how a future stock there,

we are ruined.

It was terrifying to see happening, and it was absolutely heart-rendering.

In the last few months of 2021, along the beaches where the River Tees meets the sea,

a nightmarish scene unfolded.

Along a coastline, stretching about 70 kilometers from Seam in County Durham to Robin Hood's

Bay in North Yorkshire, thousands and thousands of crabs were washing up, either twitching

alarmingly in the last throws of life, or they were dead already.

For the fishermen who know every inch of that coastline, they've never seen anything

like it.

A wall of carcasses, thousands of dead crabs had suddenly appeared out of the blue.

...