Cutting corners on environmental precautions means streamlining, and shortening, the construction process. This has led some to question the findings of government reports, and in August 2022, openDemocracy published a report alleging that politicians pressured researchers to rule out dredging as a potential cause. Fitzsimons says he never felt pressure from either side of the issue during his investigation.
Ben Houchen did not respond to The Teesside Lead’s request for comment.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North, has been advocating for the fishermen since the first washup in October 2021. He’s made repeated calls to Mark Spencer, Minister of State at DEFRA to continue looking for answers to the mortality event, describing a lack of transparency from government officials.
“They keep coming up with different theories, but no answers,” Cunningham tells The Teesside Lead. “They've managed to tell us what hasn’t been the cause of the die-off, but nobody’s ever been able to tell us what is the cause.”
Cunningham also wants to see continued monitoring of the area, fishermen compensated, and further investigation of whether the situation is improving. (As of September 2022, Spencer blamed the algae bloom for the mortality event; in February 2023, he stated it was likely a pathogen.)
“I don’t think there’s anything natural about what’s happened,” Cunningham says. “I think they’ve gotten to the point now where they’re hoping it will just go away. But the issue for us is that the sea is still in very poor condition. The fishermen are not catching anything in that area.”
The tip of the iceberg
Caldwell says the situation could get even more dire. Due to the history of Teesside as an industrial site, the work being done in the area, he says, carries great risk of adding countless pollutants—like naphthalene, for example—to the environment, including some that could be harmful to humans. At the moment, he’s working on testing the area’s marine life for heavy metals, as well as other chemicals that can find their way into the food chain and make people ill.
“There’s everything under the sun in there, including radioactive materials,” Caldwell says. “Unlike pyridine … these other pollutants, they stick around for years, hundreds of years in some cases.”
Still, dredging continues. In January 2023, Teesside developers enlisted Athena, a capital dredger, to make way for an offshore wind turbine factory. Unlike Orca, a maintenance dredger that keeps channels clear of sediment for boats to pass through, a capital dredger digs deeper into the seafloor to create new space.