Mass crab deaths leave experts baffled, A panel of experts probing the unexplained deaths of thousands of cranks and lobsters along England’s oceanfront over the last two times has failed to identify a single clear cause for them.
Dead and dying cranks and lobsters began washing up end masse at strands in the Teesside region of northeast England in October 2021, drawing public attention as original fishing communities suffered and some stressed a mass poisoning linked to the area’s artificial history.
Fishing groups said decades-old poisonous chemicals could have been released by dredging exertion and were sceptical of an original disquisition by the terrain department which suggested the deaths were likely caused by a natural but ruinous algal bloom.
In a long- awaited report, a panel of independent experts convened by the British government said both those propositions were doubtful, and that it had been “ unfit to identify a clear and satisfying single cause ” for the deaths.
“ We ’ve ruled effects out, but we ’ve not been suitable to confidently rule effects in, ” panel member Tammy Horton, a experimenter at the National Oceanography Centre, told an online press briefing. “ We ’ve come up with presumably further questions than answers. ”
The report said the deaths passed over a sustained period and along dozens of long hauls of bank and involved unusual shuddering of numerous cranks as they failed, and that other marine life remained largely innocent.
It was “ about as likely as not ” that a pathogen new to UK waters caused the deaths, it said, though no new pathogen was detected.
Several of the factors it considered might in combination also have been a cause, it added.
British Environment Minister Therese Coffey said on Friday she’d consider if farther analysis by government scientists might establish a conclusive cause.
“ The focus now needs to be on understanding further about the new pathogen linked as the most likely cause, and what support we can offer our original fishing assiduity as it recovers, ” Simon Clarke, a
