logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2022
24m 20s

The Wash

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Helen Mark visits the Wash, a vast bay in East Anglia, where the interests of fishing and conservation are finely balanced.

The Wash has been fished for centuries for cockles, mussels and brown shrimp, but it's also visited by thousands of migratory birds, as they crisscross the globe.

Fishing in the bay has been sustainably managed for the last 30 years, but next year things are changing, causing uncertainty and concern for the Wash fishing fleet.

Produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Up next
May 15
Flutterings on the Fleet
Tucked in behind Dorset's famous Chesil Beach is a unique and beautiful place - the Fleet Lagoon. Martha Kearney explores a thousand year history of human guardianship of birds on the lagoon. On the way she gets a close-up view of little tern dating platforms on the Fleet itself, ... Show More
23m 51s
Sep 2024
Aberaeron's Mackerel Festival
Jon Gower is in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, to explore how mackerel (and other fish) have shaped the people and landscape. Jon joins the pretty harbour town’s annual mackerel festival, where the humble mackerel is given thanks at the end of its season with a funeral procession, comple ... Show More
24m 9s
Jul 2012
Eels
Helen Mark is in Gloucestershire to find out more about one of our most fascinating creatures, the eel, and hear why efforts are being made to save this endangered species. When eels arrive in the UK as tiny babies, called elvers, they do so at the end of an exhausting 4,000-mile ... Show More
24m 44s
Recommended Episodes
Feb 2020
A Tale of Two Fish: Salmon, the wild and farmed
Dan Saladino investigates the possible extinction of wild Atlantic salmon within 20 years. Dan travels from the River Spey on Scotland's east coast to fish farms in the west in order to plot the decline of one species, the wild salmon, and the rise of another, farmed salmon.From ... Show More
28m 49s
Sep 2022
Sustainable Seafood? It's A Question Of Data
The last several decades have taken a toll on the oceans: Some fish populations are collapsing, plastic is an increasing problem and climate change is leading to coral bleaching — as well as a host of other problems. But marine biologist and World Economic Forum programme lead Al ... Show More
14m 7s
Jun 2022
15/6/22 - Regenerative farming, wild salmon and seabird deaths
The Sustainable Food Trust publishes a report today exploring regenerative farming and what impact this might have on self-sufficient food production in the UK. This year was one of the worst avian flu outbreaks for poultry and the disease is also hitting sea birds. Hundreds of b ... Show More
13m 35s
Oct 2020
The British and their fish
By the middle of the 20th century, the English town of Grimsby was the biggest fishing port in the world. When the catch was good “fishermen could live like rock stars”, says Kurt Christensen who first went to sea aged 15. He was instantly addicted to a tough and dangerous life o ... Show More
26m 54s
Nov 2023
17/11/2023
Farmers who continually have bovine TB outbreaks on their farms should ‘find another business’. That was what Labour Welsh Senedd member Joyce Watson suggested on the floor of the Senedd earlier this week. Ms Watson was responding to a statement from the Welsh Rural Affairs Minis ... Show More
13m 42s
Jan 2021
Marine conservationist Heather Koldewey
Professor Heather Koldewey wants to protect our oceans from over-fishing and plastic pollution. An academic who is not content to sit back and let the science speak for itself, she wants to turn science into action and has found conservation allies in some unexpected places. Work ... Show More
27m 7s
Sep 2015
Oceans of Acid
As the oceans absorb manmade carbon emissions a chemical reaction takes place which is making sea water more acidic. This subtle shift in pH level is having a profound effect on the sea animals which use calcium carbonate to form their shells and skeletons and Marine Biologists a ... Show More
27m 50s
Oct 2023
Which is healthier, farmed or wild salmon?
Salmon farming is a massive global industry. Just off the coasts of countries like Norway or Chile, hundreds of millions of these fish swim around inside big ocean nets. They provide crucial proteins and fatty acids to many people’s diets, but are they more or less healthy than t ... Show More
36m 22s