Theres a community that know that environment. Better than anybody else, i you know, listen to them. I used to go out to sea with me grandad. I think the first time i ever went out trawling i was only seven. I used to sit on his chart table in the wheelhouse, drink his irn bru we didnt believe it at first off whitby. Within weeks, it had crept along the coast and it was happening to us. And it was like, my god, whats happening here . It was frightening. Yeah oh its all come out. Something is not quite right. We used to see a lot younger crab to throw back for the following years fishery, but we arent seeing thatjust now. Theres enough catch for today, but you are always thinking ahead to the future, you always want to see plenty of stock, small stock, it is getting fed, you throw it back, you know you will catch it when it is right. But it isnt there, it isnt there to throw back. Its taken about two thirds of our crab catches away over the last 8 9 months. It is a big hit, especially in this financial climate. There was tonnes and tonnes of stock washing up, that stock is our future and it was just being massacred. Im a bit of a jill of all trades, i mix my time between being a carer, gardener, more than anything i do at least 40 hours a week a week of voluntary work. I spend hours a week investigating whats happened in the north sea. About the 6th of october, we had an absolutely massive wash up of dead crab and lobster, and they stretched the whole way along here. My suspicions were something catastrophic had to have happened. I care so much because i can see the absolutely destructive impact we have on the planet. Those Sea Creatures out there dont have a voice, so thats why people when they say to me, have you not got bored yet of ranting on . I say, actually, mate, no, i havent. And youre going to hear my voice more, because them lot out there dont have a voice and thats how i see it these documents are probably a 1,000th of what ive actually got, and im not exaggerating. Theres not much else in my head now. The start of the investigation with happened at that time which was out of the ordinary. The dredge stuck out like a sore thumb. Dredging is something which is necessary to maintain channels going in and out of ports. Basically, if youve got a port and you dont dredge the sea, every tide will bring some sand and sediment back in the channel, and eventually it will block up so nobody would be able to get in and out. So near daily dredging occurs where dredges will go along and gather up the sand and then will take it back out to spoil sites. What you have in a river like the tees is 120 years of toxic industry. So everything was dumped in there. Whilst we have massively cleaned up the water column, what we still have, historically, is the residue of that. My namesjerry hopkinson, and im the Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairmen of pd ports. Pd ports is the fifth largest port in the uk, we handle about 30 Million Tonnes a year, here on the river tees. Because of the nature of the tees, we have to pretty much dredge constantly and have been for the last a0 or 50 years. Whilst were not doing it 21w, were doing it six days a week. Ive sat with fishermen, listened to guys ask me if i got paid last month, cos i didnt, so i understand why people are looking for something to blame. If you look at the operation of this vessel, were licensed to dredge about 2. 9 Million Tonnes a year. This vessel took out 150,000 tonnes. I. E. 5 of our dredged volume. The facts are that the vessel is no bigger than the vessels we currently use. It was carefully controlled and monitored at all times by ourselves. In the immediate aftermath of its dredging, we went out and checked the depths that it had achieved via our survey craft, and it had dredged to the depth that we required it to go to. And there was a subsequent testing of that area of the river and no issues found with regards to contamination. So essentially what we are taking out, we are taking out virgin sand, that material was being removed from a path of 2 kilometres long which is at right at the entrance into the river itself. In other words, we are not taking materials out from, if you like, the epicentre of industry on either side of the banks of the river tees. You know, what ive discovered is whilst it kinds of sounds like were blaming pd ports for killing off the inshore waters, and, yes, i believe they possibly have, they havent actually operated outside of their license. So, no, they havent done anything wrong. The buck definitely stops with the government agencies. How are they so sure it is safe to be allowed to dump at sea . They have to test once every 3 years. I couldnt believe that these were the highest European Standards which defra were refusing to rule out dredging as being a threat which defra were using to rule out dredging as being a threat to the Marine Environment. A Surface Scraping once every 3 years, that is not environmental analysis in any way, shape or form. What we are doing is taking a sample of this material down to a depth of about i foot. I think that is perfectly appropriate to the necessity to ensure that the material that we are taking out is in good order and condition. If there is to be a step change in terms of the, if you like, to thresholds against which materials can be if you like, the thresholds against which materials can be disposed of offshore, and that is for the government and the environmental organisations and the scientists to evaluate. So, i studied Marine Biology coastal ecology at the university of plymouth, and then i wanted to come back to yorkshire and see if could get a job. So were potting for lobsters, working about 250 pots off whitby. The idea is to try and protect the lobster populations out in the wild, cos theyre heavily fished and theyre really commercially, ecologically important species. To do that, well take lobsters with eggs on from the wild, and the eggs will naturally release in a hatchery. Well then protect the larvae. Over their most vulnerable part of their life period, which is the first, sort of, five to six weeks. And once theyre over that stage, well then release them into the wild. Ive got core values at the hatchery, just to try and promote the, i guess, more positive sides of fishing and try to promote more positive signs of the Marine Environment and try to push for more of a balance between it, trying to protect it and nurture it, instead of take, take, take all the time. So, like, sort of pre mass mortality event. It was kind of booming. I suppose. In the last in the past 15 years, weve seen a 400 increase in the amount of lobsters landed into whitby. But what we want to make sure is that spike where its going up and that boom doesnt come crashing down on the other side. So were trying to kind of like solve a problem for tomorrow. We want to make sure juveniles, they will go to a safe environment. All the fishing communities, banded together and formed the North East Fishing Collective to really unify a voice and to show unify our voice and to show unity between us all. So i reached out to tim deere jones. Hes an independent marine pollution consultant and we tasked him to do some research himself, to do some Freedom Of Information requests and try to construct a report. From that, there was one thing he picked up which was really evident and had the potential to be the suspect behind evident and had the potential to be a suspect behind the mass mortality event. He actually identified this pyridine in some of the samples from the environmental agency. Pyridine, which is a toxic chemical, was present in high volumes in crabs washed up along the north east coast. Its a toxic chemical which has potentially laid dormant in the dredged material. He actually links the resuspension to the Dredging Activity and theorises that is has a strong chance of being a causative factor. It was, kind of, like a sort of Game Changing moment. Really, that was. That was the first sign that we might have some evidence or some backing for this dredging theory. There is a Large Scale Development to come specifically for the southbank quay, which will dwarf the amount of dredging that was done back in october. There is a certain area of that dredging which is which is being classified that it has to be taken to landfill, because its full of toxins and its harmful if they take it to sea. If youve found harmful toxins, just take it all to landfill and process it. Jump on board Viva La Revolution the situation unfolding in front of us is dire. And we felt very very frustrated that there was no help from the authorities. They were disbelieving of us as if we didnt know our own environment. We all felt helpless. What we are trying to get out of today is to reopen the case and what went on the back end of last year on the coast, and what went on the back end of last year which they closed, stop the Million Tonnes or so of spoil that will come out of the river tees for the new development, and we need help because there are people that are absolutely on their knees because the stock is not there. Really we want reimbursing for what we have lost out on. We want them to put something back, if it is proven, we want them to help the stocks to regain. Make as much noise as possible and let them have it it has been absolutely heartbreaking at times, you want to sit down and cry over what has gone on. But the coastal communities, you have the people in the street saying to you, keep going, keep fighting it. You have to get to the truth of it all. It spurs you on to fight the good fight. Im dr gary caldwell. Im a Marine Biologist here at newcastle university. My background is trying to understand how the sea and animals relate and any toxins that take place there. Pyridine is a very useful industrial chemical, something we call a solvent, which is very good at dissolving other chemicals. Lots of industry use it, it is what we call a legacy pollutant, something that this historical and been used a long time back through Industries Like cooking. Historically, there has been very poor control of Effluent Discharge Pollution basically being poured into the river. It was treated like an open sewer. Were trying to see how the crabs respond to pyridine, different amounts of pyridine, thats really important to understand, in their environment over three days. So its trying to understand what the crabs do do they die, dont they die, do we see signs of stress . Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to my building. This is where we will be doing the experiment. Dont go berserk thinking you can catch it we have the animals exposed to the chemicals, we gave him plenty of oxygen, we keep them happy, so in theory the only thing that might cause them any distress is the chemical that we are exposing them to. When we were seeing crabs that were dowdy, so if you get a crab in that state, you will get a tell them, wont you . You will be able to tell then, wont you . We can look at their behaviour as well, we do regular observations in what they are doing. There may not be a single factor responsible, but to be fair, you have a system that is under stress, and it may only take i more stress to knock at system over. Stress to knock that system over. Is pyridine, that extra stress . Im just waiting for that eureka moment. We expect to get our ist real meaningful data in a weak� s time. Meaningful data in a weeks time. There is every possibility that we find pyridine is not toxic at all. And that is just as important that it is toxic. Should we find that pyridine is poisonous, and seeing deaths at the lower range we are exposing, that would put pyridine front and centre as a candidate. Hi, gary lovely to see you again. We were effectively asking a very simple question, is pyridine toxic to crustaceans . And if yes, how toxic is it . The message is both good news and bad news, depending on your perspective. So pyridine is very toxic to crustaceans. There are no 2 ways about it. It was actually quite disturbing to find that we were finding a lot of the crabs were dead injust 6 hours. I was not quite expecting it to be quite so rapid, quite so striking. Id never have expected it to be saying it so matter of factly as that. We found that pyridine was very toxic to the crabs. Even at quite low levels. It was really quite striking. We were getting big behavioural changes, very agitated crabs, would even describe convulsions. Would almost describe convulsions. And to the extent that we were almost doing somersaults. It will take a bit of sinking in. The symptoms you are talking about in the crabs, the rolling forward, acting drunk, that was exactly what our fishermen have been saying. A single drop of pyridine in a litre of sea water, that is enough to kill half the population in three days. It is very poisonous. We still have some data to analyse, but the take home message is pyridine is a very toxic to crabs. Given the amount of pyridine that was recorded in the crabs that had died, i think we are starting to see that smoking done. To see that smoking gun. We found out that pyridine can do that to the crabs, but now we have to find out whether it was there, whether it was in the water. So it is ongoing. It is just the first steps really to finding the answers. I believe that the Government Agency should reopen the investigation and they should give the Pyridine Aspect of it the attention it deserves, we have enough information out to justify that. Hoping and praying that they will take on board this data and reinvestigate what happened, because it is not about proving who is right or wrong any more, it is genuinely about trying to improve things for the future. We will probably be out of business before we get a conclusion. I would like to think that we could keep the boat for another year, but if i feel like we are going to be going backwards too quick during winter again, then i will have to sell it. And that is my dad as a little lad with my great grandad. Mending herring nets. We keep on fighting and we will keep on fighting because we have got support from our own people. Hello lots of contrasts and the weather this afternoon. Lots of sunshine across england rails but we look at the Bigger Picture of what happens after we got this Area Pressure to south west gradually tracking its way north and east is reeses and heavy and thundery rain through this morning now arriving into Southern Scotland still lingering into Northern Ireland just about clearing from east anglia and there is another spell of heavy thundery showers pushing up from the south and west so different sounds really clouds across scotland bit of sunshine for the Northern Highlands that heavy rain continued to move its way northward sunshine behind in these heavy showers pushing northwards through the remainder of the afternoon. And it is mild out there 11 to 18 celsius the top temperature, more like 11 or 12 for the northern isles. So then through this evening to areas of rain the first one pushing its way north through scotland weakening as it does show and these showers and thunderstorms spiralling around that area of low pressure and working their way eastwards across england and wales are notably so many of us, particularly so the channel coast and the Channel Islands where we can see gusts of 50 or 55 mph another very mild night, ten to 13 celsius quite easily and doubles figures that it quite easily and doubles figures thatitis quite easily and doubles figures that it is that mild thing that we are going to keep in the week ahead. It stays very mild but i dad by night, frost free still spells of rain a time but also some dry and sunny spell some of us may even get away with a few dry days. Tomorrow we got some showers clearly from eastern coast, sometime following on behind and then sunshine and scattered showers tomorrow always most frequent and further west you are they may work their way a bit further eastwards still that noticeable breeze, but still very mild so 13 to 17 celsius the top temperature for many of us through tomorrow afternoon. Just give you on those showers through tomorrow evening, to equally across Western Scotland where the kids gathered to give more frequent showers across Northern England as well. As we head into tuesday, it is so slightly is quite a spell of weather ahead of our next Atlantic System approaching from the south west. Dues over many starts mostly dry but properly so missed in low cloud in scotland and Northern England and then for many some spells of sunshine through much of tuesday before the cloud builds ahead of this band of rain pushing into southern and south west England Wales and perhaps later in the day into Northern Ireland as well. Similar sorts of temperatures really, so the mid if not high teens across the ute quay and in fact those temperatures will rise by that i get a wednesday or thursday perhaps 20 or 21 cells is a Cross East Anglia South East England also for many for the time you get a wednesday or thursday perhaps 20 or 21 celsius aCross East Anglia South East England also for many further spells of rain. This is bbc news, with the latest headlines. Former chancellor rishi sunak confirms hes in the race to be the next conservative leader. Suella braverman, the former home secretary, is endorsing his bid. Foreign secretary James Cleverly endorses borisjohnson, although the former Prime Minister is yet to officially enter the race. A close ally is confident he will. Yes, i have been speaking to borisjohnson and clearly, hes going to stand. Theres a great deal of support for him, as you will have seen. Penny mordaunt is still in the running, with 23 backers. She told the bbc she believes in cabinet led politics. I have my views. I will not be imposing policy that i have just made up in a room, by myself. Labour leader, sir keir starmer, says his party hasnt got