On England's dead rivers, fishing towns are dying too

The Conservative government leaves behind a shocking legacy of river pollution. Between warming waters, bacteria and sewage discharges, it's not clear if the communities on the waterways have a future

By Richard Booth

"It’s not dying: look at it, it’s dead."

Tim Biddlestone is standing on a beach off the River Teign, overlooking the water he has relied on to support his family for more than 50 years. 

The former parish councillor is in his seventies, with the kind of white moustache and mutton chops only a true seaman can get away with. He stands by his boat and points at The Salty, a sandbank at the estuary that lies between the Devon town of Teignmouth and his village, Shaldon.

"It’s just a desert now. A few dark patches of mussels but there’s not even seaweed anymore. This is meant to a region that depends on fishing, our history is disappearing in front of our eyes."

Proudly born and bred in the area, Tim is one of just two active licensed salmon net fishermen, known as Seine Netsmen, in the Southwest. A few short years ago, there were 18. 

The Teign

The Teign is not a celebrity river. It’s not at the centre of the news agenda like the Wye or the Severn, it’s not even the best known river in South Devon - that would be the nearby Dart. Most people in England would not be able to point it out on a map. It is relatively small, just 31 miles long, tumbling down from the slopes of Dartmoor through wooded valleys owned by the National Trust. It eventually passes sewage treatment works near the town of Newton Abbot, where it becomes an estuary before reaching the English Channel at Shaldon and the port town of Teignmouth.

Teignmouth is famous for three things; being the last place in the UK to be raided by foreign troops (1690), being the hometown of Muse (1994) and fishing. Muse Frontman Matt Belamy now owns a house overlooking the river. But apart from the occasional rock band, the town is an average British seaside one; tourists flock in the summer, business struggle in the winter. Local amenities close and vape shops open. 

The river, like other waterways around the country, shapes the towns and villages it touches. Many have relied on it, some still do. And like other waterways, all is not well with The Teign. As someone who is on the river more than most, Tim testifies to this. He says the water is unrecognisable now. Nearly all species are in decline, and locals point the finger at a swarm of different factors; dredging, climate change, pollution, and poor management to name a few. But sewage always comes out on top.

Last year, the Teign Estuary saw 20 South West Water discharges of untreated sewage and wastewater, totalling more than 2,100 hours.

"There’s always sewage, we see it everyday. It’s part of life on the river," Tim tells me, as he rests on a bench between the pub and the beach after a day of fishing in Shaldon. It’s not the sight of sewage that he sees as the issue, but what’s in it. 

When Tim was a child he says he would swim in the river and ‘push away plenty of turds’ but now he is certain it’s what else goes in the system, what gets flushed. Wet wipes, condoms and chemicals coming from the waste plants are the real problem, he says. “Human waste doesn’t contaminate a river, it doesn’t contaminate fields, that’s just manure. It’s what we are flushing down our toilets now. The new stuff, the chemicals, people don’t think that the products they flush end up in our rivers. The treatment tanks can’t cope with the rain water. If it was just basic sewage it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.”

Tim considers nearby Brixham, where an outbreak of a parasite in tap water left many sick and some in hospital. It’s on the lips of many in the region during my visit in May. South West Water said it believes a damaged air valve on private land was the cause. ‘We are all just wondering when it’s going to happen here,’ Tim adds.

Teignbridge District Council recently passed a vote of no confidence in South West Water. Local MPs will be asked to lobby the government on pollution on the river.

South West Water says it is investing in the area to tackle the spills.

Warming waters

In April, Vibrio bacteria was found in the water by Exeter University scientists. The Environment Agency was quick to issue a warning that swimmers risk serious ear infections and stomach upsets. Many are suspicious of how the water has been tested and why it has only been noticed now. Locals point to cases when there has been water quality warnings in Teignmouth, but not a two-minute swim away in Shaldon. 

Following the discovery of the bacteria, controversial plans were put in place to reduce the bathing area in the river at Shaldon - where tourists and locals have swam for generations - by 90 per cent. Off Teignmouth a sea swimming group regularly has to cancel swims due to water quality. A recent council meeting heard global warming is creating conditions for bacteria to increase, sewage spills are also said to help it to spread. 

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency described the bacteria as “naturally occurring”, adding: “The Environment Agency routinely carries out regular sampling from designated bathing waters for bacteria listed in the Bathing Waters Directive.  We are not currently aware of any incidents involving these bacteria in the Teign Estuary area".

The powers that be are trying other ideas to tackle the problem. To reduce animal waste in the water the Environment Agency and Teignbridge Council have deployed a model peregrine falcon, nicknamed ‘RoboBird’, to scare away gulls from certain areas. But bird poo is just a drop in the water when it comes to the Teign’s problems.

The issue of bacteria and warming waters was originally highlighted to experts at The University of Exeter by another local fisherman and Shaldon resident, Stuart Reynolds. Stuart is at the heart of raising awareness of water quality and is a proud thorn in the sides of both the Environment Agency and the local council. He says the river needs all the help it can. Others say it’s too late, it can’t be saved.

But like many along the river, Stuart says it's not just one factor killing the river, but many, old and new: “The river faces many threats.  It is not just about sewage overflows: South West Water can point to improvements over the years. However, centuries old mine workings have left traces of heavy metals, agricultural runoff and regular sewage overflows increase the bacterial problems, and climate change is warming the brew.”

Overfishing and fish diseases are also factors, he adds: “Perhaps the most shocking thing about the river’s decline in the last 20 years is that no one really cares that much.  Many fellow anglers just accept the inevitable bad days, even though they are getting more frequent, pausing only to blame the ‘big commercial trawlers’.  Worse though, there are some leaders in the local community who mutter darkly that ‘we are a tourist village with lots of businesses and we do not need scaremongering’.” 

Stuart says he has been banned from a local Facebook page pointing out that, at one point last year, the water quality was 13 times worse than the safe level for swimming.

David Cox is a Lib Dem councillor for Teignmouth and former mayor of the town. He claims that as a tourist town, some will ignore the water quality problem amid fear of holidaymakers being put off: “When tourists get here and see the water turning colour they are going to tell people, it will get out whether people talk about it or not. What we need to do is tackle the problem, not ignore it.”

“We are fighting to keep the water clean and being challenged at every level, we have worked hard to educate local businesses about pollution and then all our hard work can be ruined in a second by sewage run-off.

David is keen to add that it is not just the mouth of the river that suffers: “The Teign is polluted from start to finish. The river either has sewage or slurry.”

Flounders, shellfish and eels 

For year, Teignmouth - where locals will tell you you used to be able to walk over the estuary on the back of flat fish - was the site of a flounder competition. 

Now, the competition is now held up as an example of the sorry state of the water. Up to 600 anglers would compete over a weekend in November to catch the largest flounder, a flatfish similar to plaice. The largest flounder ever caught in the UK was caught in Teignmouth in 1994. In previous competitions over 500 fish were caught and returned. In 2022 just over 100 anglers turned up. The records are likely to remain unbeaten.

The competition is run by Teignmouth Sea Angling Society (SAS). Bobby Drew is the chairman of Teignmouth SAS, he says the size and numbers of fish have dramatically dropped over the last 10 years. He puts the blame on trawlers, overfishing and natural predators like seals. The competition is still planned for later this year but if entries continue to drop and catches decline, who knows how long it will go on for.

Dredging 

On a grey Sunday in May, Teignmouth local Mike Bob fishes from the sandbank where the shallow estuary meets the sea. He’s one of many who have fished the waters for years, keeping up the tradition of the town relying on the water for dinner. He caught nothing today, when he first started fishing in the area 18 years ago, he says he would catch at least six bass a day. He describes the decline as gradual, but says it came to a head eight years ago. His theory centres round sand eels, or the lack thereof. In the past he would rely on live sand eels to lure in bass. “There’s just none about now,” he says. “The small amount there are we buy live from Ricky, he used to go out at low tide and catch five or six big buckets, now he goes out and he’s lucky to get one”. 

Sand eels can be added to the long list of marine life which anglers in the area tell me have disappeared: mussels, oysters, mackerel, salmon. Bass is the only fish I'm told are actually on the increase, mainly down to EU regulations.

When I ask Mike for Ricky’s surname he laughs and shrugs. “Just Ricky with the bait.” At the docks behind Teignmouth I can’t find ‘Ricky with the bait’, but I do get hold of Trevor Hall who runs the company Wrigglers Baits.

Trevor says his business was forced to move into frozen bait after bass fishing was banned and sand eels disappeared from the area. He adds that he used to get 50 boats in the morning before 8am for bass fishing. As for a lack of sand eels, he’s more concerned about dredging in the area. 

In 2016 sand was removed from the bed of the river to allow bigger cargo ships in. Some locals say this turned the sandy beach to the more rocky one you can see today, and Trevor claims it destroyed the local sand eel population. ‘The whole area used to be beautiful sand and now it’s stones. It’s the dredging, without a doubt, they took out a crazy amount.”

Wrigglers Baits now practises more sustainable fishing in an attempt to help with the problem, using larger 10mm netting to make sure smaller eels are free to grow and spawn.

Elsewhere On Teignmouth seafront Johnathan Orchard has just come up on the shore, out for a spear fish on a grey Friday before the May Bank Holiday he has one spider crab in his bag. Moving down from London just after lockdown he is more positive than some, saying he sees plenty of life in the water. ‘You swim near the back beach and there are plenty of mussels’, he adds. Marine biologists might describe this as shifting baseline syndrome - as time goes on generations don’t realise what the rivers used to have. A newer local may see the water as thriving, but someone who has been in the area longer would call it dead.

Shellfish in the area are dying off, surveys prove this. Mussels and oysters have been harvested in the Teign for centuries, they were a large part of the diet in Anglo Saxon times. That's now at risk.

Warming waters due to climate change have been blamed for another disease that has been recorded in the river, this one hitting shellfish. Oyster herpesvirus, a disease that has killed millions of oysters in the UK and France was confirmed in the water in 2023.  The virus, also known as OsHV-1, previously killed eight million shellfish in Kent in 2010. 

In 2012, a survey showed over 1,100 tonnes of mussels in just one part of the Teign. By 2018, there was one tonne. The mussels disappeared in just six years and no one really knows why, some think the virus has been around for years longer than many thought, some blame storms washing away the habitats, others blame the water quality. 

The river

Upriver on Dartmoor, way past Shaldon Bridge, which carries drivers from Exeter to Plymouth on the busy A379, you will find Fingle Bridge. Here, a picturesque pub, The Fingle Bridge Inn, attracts tourists all year round.

Opposite the entrance to the pub, a blackboard asks members of the public to list wildlife sightings. ‘Elvis Presley, Big Foot X 2, Martians, crocodile’ are scribbled down. More likely sightings are also recorded; ‘Browns duck, kite, swift’. 

Upstream farming is an issue on the Teign, as it is across most of the UK. Agricultural runoff creates algae and algae suck the oxygen from the water. Biologists say the fish are suffocating. 

On the other side of the bridge, National Trust posters are plastered along the river path. They warn of dog deaths in the area. There have been three deaths to date. The poster reads: ‘We are aware of incidents reported to us over the past couple of weeks of dogs falling ill after being exercised near or on land along the river Teign on Dartmoor’. Locals on social media have questioned if the pets could have drank polluted water from the river, others suggest a case of poison being left on the path. Devon and Cornwall Police are still investigating and The National Trust said nothing suspicious has been found.

Even at the origin of the river, 31 miles from Tim in Shaldon, where the streams of The North Teign and South Teign meet, the foam of pollution can be seen on a sunny day in May. It is safe to say the river faces issues start to finish.

What next?

It is not clear how long the National Flounder Championship will continue, it is not known how long shellfish will be farmed; the Vibrio bacteria will come back every time the water temperature rises. It is already roughly 2°C above normal for the time of year.  Whether dredging, pollution, overfishing, climate change or a cocktail or them all, there is no doubt the changes to the river are man made, if they can be reversed it is yet to be seen. 

The Teign is not a famous river; nor is it unique. Across the country, similar stories are told. No single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health, according to environmental charity The Rivers Trust. The whole country has woken up to the demise; Keir Starmer criticised the Conservative government’s handling of the issue, calling it a “shocking dereliction of duty”. But it remains to be seen what the Labour government is planning to do about it. 

And meanwhile, back on the beach in Sheldon, Tim tells me he’s ready to be the last Seine netsman. If things continue the way they are, he may well be. 

This article was originally published on July 13 2024.