Toxin may have caused sealife disaster off UK coast, scientists find

The government faces fresh questions over an ecological disaster on England’s North East coast after scientists revealed sea life may have been killed by a manmade toxin.

The chemical pyridine, used in industrial processes, could be the cause of mass die-offs of crabs and lobsters since October last year, a team of scientists from Durham, Newcastle, Hull, and York have determined, according to a draft report seen by The Independent.

The findings contradict a joint agency report led by the Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs (Defra), which found the toxin was not present in waters where sealife had washed up dead from the Tees estuary down the coast to Whitby and Scarborough. Instead, the report said an algal bloom was likely to be the cause of the deaths, despite finding concentrations of pyridine in samples of dead crabs.