Between October and December last year, dead and dying crabs, lobsters and other sea creatures washed up on the North East England coastline, at Seaton Carew, South Gare, Redcar, Marske and Saltburn. The heaps of dead sea creatures were waist deep in some places. Corpses of porpoises and seals also appeared.
A tide of sea life corpses
The currents spread the slaughter from the coast off Hartlepool down to Robin Hood’s Bay, south of Whitby.
The government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced in November last year that testing was still taking place to determine the cause of the die-off.
An Environment Agency (EA) survey in mid-January this year showed that live, healthy crabs were present in the waters.
Defra in their report of February this year ascribed the mass mortalities to a lethal algal bloom and closed the case.
Two more waves of marine corpses appeared in February and May. Fishermen complained of stretches of the sea where there is simply no life.
Suspicions remained that the deaths were caused by chemicals released after sediment dredged from the River Tees was dumped at sea at approved depositary sites.
PD Ports which manage the waterway deny that routine dredging near the mouth of the Tees disturbed a toxic silt that might have caused the deaths. Deeper dredging to clear access to new developments associated with Teesside Freeport, is due to start next month.
Algae or Pyridine?
A research report published in March by pollution scientist Tim Deere-Jones for the Whitby Fishermen’s Association highlighted Defra’s finding – that the presence of the chemical pyridine was 74 times the level found in crab corpses in Cornwall.
Pyridine is used in the manufacture of herbicides and pesticides and in numerous industrial applications.
In May, multi-agency research led by Defra confirmed the original finding of algae and not chemical pollution as the cause:
“Taken together the findings from the different parts of the investigation could not support the hypothesis that pyridine was the cause of the mortalities.”
Tim Deere-Jone has produced a briefing in response, published in June. Leading the report are reiterated concerns about the high levels of pyridine found in the dead crustaceans. Deere-Jones examines the sparse but alarming scientific data on pyridine and its derivatives, showing it to be lethal to certain sea life. He also reports that crabs and lobsters – the focus of the Defra report- were not the only species affected. They include creatures that feed on the sea-bed and apex-predator marine mammals at the top of the food chain. He argues:
“Pyridine easily transforms into a toxic sediment on the sea bed”.
Deere-Jones also questions the validity of Defra’s conclusion that an algal bloom was to blame. The species identified by Defra, Karenia mikimotoi, could not thrive in the chilly North Sea waters. He concludes:
“The Defra [ algae ] hypothesis still has no confirmed empirical base and thus remains unevidenced”.
Were Pyridine users contacted?
The February Defra report stated they had conducted: “a review of environmental permits and industrial sites for evidence of abnormal discharges.” But they did not mention if this was specific to pyridine or whether they had analysed the companies’ compliance record on safety reporting. There was no interest in reviewing unusual activity around pyridine use such as a change of processes or effluent treatment.
North East Bylines found no mention in the May Defra report of the task force contacting local processors of pyridine or its derivatives. There is no evidence that an evaluation of local pyridine users’ safety and compliance history was part of Defra’s research methodology.
The chemical pollution could be current or historical. But it would be very easy to find present users of pyridine by searching the EA permits database using the keyword “pyridine” or its product category, with local postcodes. That way pesticide manufacturers for example, with pyridine permits, could be quickly contacted.
For instance, Vertellus Specialties (UK) Ltd processed pyridine for its derivatives at its Seal Sands site near the mouth of the Tees. We must stress that we have no evidence of wrongdoing by Vertellus or its processing partners.
From Vertellus’ EA 2020 Partial Surrender Notice EPR/BU0311IX/S007 (found on a Google search), more information has come to light – including a proposed pipeline carrying treated pyridine waste effluent near the mouth of the Tees.
At its Seal Sands plant, Vertellus was permitted to produce pyridine and derivatives. Tees Valley Monitor reported that Vertellus imported pyridine from another site, producing only its derivatives at Seal Sands.
The EA Notice states that effluent generated from the Vertellus plant would be treated in the site’s Effluent Blending Plant prior to disposal at the Northumbrian Water Ltd Wastewater Treatment Works, located at Bran Sands on the opposite bank of the Tees.
Vertellus had an agreement with Northumbrian Water to discharge the site’s effluent (trade effluent and rainwater) at a maximum flow rate of 5m3/hr or 120m3/day.
The Notice authorised discharge of the site’s effluent to Northumbrian Water through a newly constructed pipeline.
In November last year Vertellus announced the closure of its Seal Sands site, i.e. after the marine deaths, but the company’s annual report mentioned closure of “a site” in the September of that year – before the mass mortalities.
It would have been a simple matter to check whether the testing and other safety data of the companies contacted was compliant as well searching any enforcement history. For example a Google search shows that in 2013 Northumbrian Water was fined £15,000 for failing to provide discharge samples at Bran Sands and comply with discharge limits, with 25 other offences taken into account, in 2005-2006.
This was some 15 years before the Vertellus effluent pipeline. In January this year Northumbrian Water was fined £240,000 for polluting Coundon Burn and the River Gaunless near Bishop Auckland in 2017.
In October last year the company was fined £540,000 for polluting a watercourse near Castle Eden, again in 2017. In February this year Northumbrian Water agreed to pay £165,000 to a charity following pollution from a discharge in Kitty’s Burn on the River Tyne. ( The company is currently the subject of an investigation by the water regulator OfWat.
Tees Valley Monitor has searched the Health and Safety Executive database, finding that in 2020 Vertellus received five Improvement Notices at its Teesside site. These were for “Failure to apply adequate standards to control major accident hazards.” The notices were for Inorganic Basic Chemicals however – pyridine is an organic chemical.
This is not to declare that Vertellus and Northumbrian Water are the prime polluting suspects. But they are just two examples of the companies that could have been contacted and assessed. How many other local pyridine users should have been reviewed?
We have reached out for information and comments to Vertellus (in Indianapolis), Northumbrian Water, Defra, EA, and the Health and Safety Executive. Should any of them choose to reply we will update this article.
Wall Of silence
The Freedom of Information requests from North East Bylines and Tim Deere-Jones might shed more light on possible pyridine pollution. But all FoI requests are processed at a glacial pace and there is little political will to prolong publicity around this particular issue.
The website OpenDemocracy has published the results of their Environmental Information Regulation request and is accusing Defra of a cover-up.
OpenDemocracy discovered meeting notes from early 2022 that showed government agencies “scrambling to issue a ‘rebuttal'” to the first Deere-Jones report following pressure from government ministers anxious to shift the focus from dredging as the possible cause.
The Royal Society For the Protection of Birds has called for a stay on dredging until a full scientific analysis is carried out regarding the cause of the deaths.
The administrator of the Facebook group Redcar Alert asked the Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, to attend a public meeting to discuss the issue. Houchen, the driving force behind the Teesside Freeport project, responded by blocking the group administrator from his Facebook page.
While the government presses to close the case, other possible causes for the marine deaths go unresearched: bad weather disturbing the sediment, or a freak wave. Then there’s the demolitions last September of the Dorman Long Tower and industrial coke ovens in preparation for the much-touted Freeport. The explosions could have released historic pyridine or disturbed the riverbed.
Meanwhile local fisherman can no longer make a living out of the dead sea, with complaints that a day’s work yielded £25.
And what of consumer confidence? There are already unsubstantiated reports on social media of picking gangs foraging the piles of crustacean corpses. How will the rumours affect the local seafood market?
As Houchen maintains his brass-monkey silence over anything that might rock his Freeport boat will he add fishing to steel-making in the great Tees Valley economic die-off?
UPDATE: We received a reply from the Environment Agency:
“As part of this investigation and the Environment Agency’s (EA) ongoing regulation of Teesside industry, the EA contacted relevant operators with an environmental permit to check that they were operating correctly. There are no operational permitted companies on Teesside that produce pyridine and no known unauthorised discharges.”
It seems that the EA didn’t contact companies that use pyridine or its derivatives in their manufacturing processes.
Nor is there mention of Vertellus Specialties UK Ltd which brought in pyridine to manufacture pyridine derivatives, treated the waste on-site and then transferred it by pipeline to Northumbrian Water. Vertellus may still have been active or decommissioning during the sea life die back.
Nor did the EA refer to Northumbrian Water which treated Vertellus waste.
