Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are screaming at the government, Please remember to do your job. Your job that we pay you for is to regulate our waters and our environment. And you are failing us. And that's what we were marching for the other day, that they need to take a serious look about how they regulate our waters, because how they're doing it currently is not fit for purpose.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Hello. Welcome back to Hope Springs. I have been chatting with Jim Murray. Best known for roles in Primeval and the Crown, the actor, artist and activist had his life turned upside down when his baby daughter died of a congenital heart disease in 2009.
Seeking solace in fishing, he became aware of the plight of our rivers and now actively campaigns for clean water, founding activist anglers, hosting a podcast and championing the salmon. Some of you may have spotted him at the March for Clean Water last year carrying a very large fish.
So I began our conversation by asking him to tell me, what is it about our water that brought him and so many others out on the streets.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: To protest Water is a wonderful life Giver, as we know, and any sort of water, environment, river, seas, lakes, are all incredibly important places and spaces and intrinsic to our environment, as you know. But it's what we're doing to the water that that is the problem. And fundamentally speaking, we are poisoning our waterways, our fresh waterways, for several different reasons. We're allowing industry, such as for the sake of example, water companies pretty much free rein to use and abuse our waterways as drains for profit. And we are not regulating them properly and haven't done for decades, ever since they became privatized.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: So they were privatized in 1989?
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: And handed over, I believe, because the EU directives were asking the government to spend an awful lot of money on repairing and improving the waterways. And so the government handed the problem over to private enterprise.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: And it didn't seem to happen.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Well, it didn't. I mean, you can see from certain angles why that was a good idea at the time, why Thatcher's government decided to do that. Because the problem, as you just alluded, was so big and so expensive that it was best in the hands of bodies that could afford it. But what they did is that they deflated the price of our water companies, which at the time were obviously government owned.
So much so that they made them very affordable and very attractive to businesses who could then leverage them to a certain extent in order to borrow, in order to invest, supposedly into the infrastructure. And that was the idea. And that did happen to a certain extent because there was regulation in place at the time. But gradually over the years, those rules became more and more laxed. And then the likes of Macquarie, I think it was, and Thames Water suddenly found a way to really supersize that leverage. I think that was 15, 20 years ago. And since then that has become the financial model for all other investors. And that has been the sort of death nail in the coffin.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So it's been about profiteering.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: It's completely about profiteering, yeah.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: And, well, legally they are actually allowed to spill sewage out into the rivers and into the oceans.
Perhaps you'd like to tell me what that looks like.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Well, it's that word spill that I have a problem swallowing. I mean, it's. Spilling tends to allude to an accident, doesn't it? We spill a glass of water or we spill a glass of milk or wine or whatever, they're not accidentally spilling, they're manipulating the system through CSOs and a myriad of other not fit for purpose drainage systems. And the ea, obviously implement the environmental agency. The environmental agency, sorry, yeah. Implement sort of strict limits, or supposedly strict limits. You have to apply for a permit as a water company and a water company has to behave within the remits of those permit. And they're only allowed to spill a certain amount of sewage, treated sewage, and it has to be. It has to be conditional, such as when the weather's terrible, when it's extreme weather, isn't it? Extreme weather. But they've been completely turning a blind eye to that and the government can't keep up with it. And as a result, you get what we have now, which is, you know, coastlines swimming in untreated human excrement. You have rivers such as sssi, chalk streams, for the sake of example, which were having untreated sewage emptied out through CSOs during extreme weather. And not until recently when we discovered it, as in we being local people, stakeholders, riverkeepers, NGOs, and started protesting. And it's all blown up, obviously, across the country recently, which is a start.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: I saw Paul Whitehouse's documentary, Troubled Rivers and I mean, there was a man who was literally going in to record this sewage and there was sanitary towels, wet wipes that people had just flushed down the loo and. And obviously all the natural excrement which is just literally floating out into these beautiful rivers.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: That's that man, Mark Barrowman, I think. Well, I know he is. He's a wonderful, wonderful man. And he literally, as you say, he. He puts on a wetsuit or a dry suit and he goes all around the country documenting sewage in rivers and where the fish used to be. He has great historic footage and sort of before and after. And now the fish have been replaced by, as you said, sanitary towels, wet wipes, human excrement which just kill the river.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: And of course, it's not just about sewage companies, it's climate change and the increased downpours, rapid downpours, which presumably means that these sewage companies, through this loophole, are able to spew out ever more of this sewage.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Well, yes, it's that. And also because of the extreme weather that we seem to have been having and suffering over the past five years, especially the infrastructure in place cannot cope with those downpours because there hasn't been the investment that has been necessary over the last 20, 30 years. So the water companies are left scratching their heads and panicking as much as everybody else because literally the infrastructure is not there to cope.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: So they're one of the bad guys. And the other one is the industrialized agricultural farming.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Afraid so, yeah. I mean, it's. Everybody has their own opinion on this, but when it comes to certainly large scale industrial agriculture, there is a blind spot. We support the farmers. Absolutely. You know, they have my support and I grew up rurally in Herefordshire for a swathe of my childhood. So, you know, I love, I love the farmers and I don't think, unlike water companies who are profiteering and generally try and play the system, I don't think farmers can be put quite in the same bracket as that. Farmers love their land on the whole. But I think there is a lot of ignorance out there and I think there's very little incentive from the government for farmers to perhaps reshape the land a little bit or plant cover, crop down closer to the banks, maybe move that gate so that when it does flood, it doesn't go straight down down into the river. There are many things that farms and farmers can do which are pretty easy and not particularly expensive in order to mitigate the draining of the land into the rivers.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: So what I mean, particularly the River Wye and its predicament, which is one of the most biodiverse rivers in the country, is now dead. And the Severn is going the same way. And the chicken farming, which is sort of sometimes several miles back, and it's this runoff, isn't it, of phosphates and nitrates into the water, which is then.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Eutrefying, eutrifying or atrifying. I mean, any fing is bad, but it's taking out the oxygen, it's creating algae blooms. Too many phosphates or nitrates in the river will kill life, fundamentally. And yes, you're right, from what I gather, I haven't spent much time on. On the Y in recent years, but I have it under good authority that it is. It's not quite dead. Because if we're to say it's dead, then that gives people an excuse to write it off, doesn't it, and not really have much hope for it. And rivers are incredibly resilient and as. As is nature and can bounce back very quickly. And I think there is still hope for the why.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Fergal Sharkey, the punk rocker of Undertones, was on stage at the 2022 Labour Conference, basically saying there's not a single river in this country which is unaffected. And so we all know that the last government got in on 4th of July, on the 3rd of September, I believe the first water bill came out for special measures. And I'd love to know more about what's been happening with the legislation and what the government's doing in the last couple of months. And is it positive?
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Do you know what? I would love to know as well, because there's been a lot of noise and a lot of promise, but nothing concrete has yet come forward. Now, I appreciate they've only been there in the scale of things two minutes, but there was a lot of promise and there was a lot of. I would suggest a lot of people may have voted with the environment in mind, certainly because the last government, as we know, perhaps didn't have. Well, certainly didn't care about the environment.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Certainly didn't make it part of their manifesto.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: No mean. Therese, a coffee. Say no more. Anyway, moving on from that. Relax, Jim. From what we're hearing, very little, sadly, Steve Reed is. Is engaging with NGOs. I know that he talks to Fergal, as you mentioned, but what we. What we've been told recently is that they have commissioned a review led by not a biology person, not an NGO environmentalist, but. But a banker, which we're all scratching our head a little bit about. Forgive me, his name doesn't spring to mind. And they to go away for six to 12 months and have a proper look, we're told at how the water industry is regulated. I think we already know that the way it is regulated of what DEFRA Environmental Agency are not currently doing their job, are not fit for purpose. They've been stripped out so badly over the years by various governments for investment that they just literally cannot keep up with all the. All the behaviors of these water companies. And it's just not there. It's a hollow, hollow body.
[00:11:02] Speaker C: So it's claiming that it's blocking bonuses for the executives who are being paid extortionate amount of money.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yes, there was.
[00:11:08] Speaker C: I think it was 9.7 million. And then monitoring sewerage outlets and bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers and strengthening the power of regulators. Ofwat, what is your view about OFWAT and the work that they're doing?
[00:11:24] Speaker A: I think ofwat, I feel very strongly about offwat. They are not fit for purpose. They have proved that time and time again. If of what worked, we would not be in the situation that we are in now. OFWAT is meant to regulate the financial structuring of how the water companies behave. They decide how much water companies can put our bills up by what of what should have done is put the bills up slowly but steadily in line with inflation would have been a start, so that there was money there to invest in infrastructure, but sadly became politicized as a result. Water bills are being kept artificially low in order to attract votes for whichever government is in power at the time. And now suddenly, when there's a really big problem that can't be ignored and we need money to fix it, you know, the water companies go, well, if you want us to fix it, we're going to have to put up bills by as much as 90%, which is crazy if you think about it. If they'd have been increasing those bills or if what had been allowing those bills to be increased incrementally in line with what the rivers needed, we would certainly. I won't say we wouldn't be in this mess, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad. And can I just say sorry, and you might want to use this, you might not. But with regards to potential solutions or retrospective solutions, hindsight's a wonderful thing and all that. I'm not necessarily convinced either that nationalizing the water companies is the answer because that hasn't really proved to fit things in the past when under duress, whole sectors, you know, are rescued, for want of a better word, by the government. I think there has to be some sort of hybrid model, but I think regulation is where it all starts and they need to be regulated properly. And we are screaming at the government. That's what the march was about. The march was all about. Please remember to do your job. Your job that we pay you for is to regulate our waters and our environment and you are failing us. And I don't think it's anything to do with nationalization. I think it's to do with investing more money in OFWAT and defra the ea. I would go further and strip the whole thing apart and start again and rebuild it root and branch. And that's what we were marching for the other day, that they need to take a serious look about how they regulate our waters, because how they're doing it currently is not fit for purpose.
[00:13:52] Speaker C: Brilliant. Thank you for saying that.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: So let's talk about.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Got that off my chest.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: So I'm going to take you back to how the passion was spawned.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Very sadly, you lost your daughter, Bella Jane, after eight months.
Would you like to tell me a bit more about.
Well, first of all, what it was like, those eight painful months and what you were up against with your wife, Sarah, and where it went after that.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah.
So Ella Jane was born with a congenital heart disease. We didn't know that until she was actually born. It wasn't picked up on the scans, but as soon as she was born, it became very apparent that there was something wrong.
So that snowballed very quickly and she ended up in pediatric intensive care unit down. Down in Southampton General Hospital University, which is a very good, Very, very good pediatric hospital.
And she was there for four months where she underwent surgeries on her heart and she was looked after absolutely beautifully, breathtakingly brilliant. NHS at that level, sort of acute medicine and emergency medicine. I, you know, I couldn't fault them. And. And not just for Ella Jane, for us too. They were. They were so good to us in those. In those dark times. And she came home for four glorious months and then that was very brave of you because.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of looking after.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: We had to become doctors. Yeah. I mean, we lived in the hospital for four months, so you pick up a lot. You just pick up a lot by watching doctors do their thing. And obviously you get a crash course in how to feed someone with a nasal gastric tube, how to administer oral medicines and intravenously to a small baby. And we became pretty. I wouldn't say expert, but we were good enough to be trusted to take her home and we took her home, where we had her for four glorious months. And she passed away at home in her cot one night, January 3, 2009. And that was the. The bright, brief, beautiful spark that was Ellen Jane.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: And she had an amazing sort of the last 24 hours. She.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: She did, yeah, she. She did. It's. It's interesting and I believe. I really do believe this. And you see it with.
You see it with. With animals, you see with plant Life and life in general, I think, and elderly people just before they die, if they're given a chance, or if they're not, you know, in a coma, let's say, you know, are unconscious. There is a. There is a burst of life. And Ella Jane was no different. She couldn't feed properly because of her condition. But we were teaching. The big ambition was to teach her to take a bottle of milk rather than have to feed her through a nasogastric tube. And. And that was what we were working towards. And the day she died, she took a full bottle without any help, guzzled it down. And of course you think you've turned a corner as a parent, but in hindsight, who knows? We like to think, and we like to believe that was her final sort of farewell and, and thank you, if you like, for, for the brief time she had. And, you know, she was showing off in the most wonderful way. So, yes, that, that, that, that happened. And it was. Yeah, it was marvelous. It was obviously bittersweet, but it was a marvelous thing to, to witness something so small as watching your child, you know, take a bottle of milk without any aid. It's funny, isn't it, when you look back at it. That was the biggest thing that had happened to. To us for. For quite some years at that point.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: How did you manage the passing of your daughter?
[00:17:52] Speaker A: We left the country is what we did.
[00:17:54] Speaker C: You went to Cambodia?
[00:17:55] Speaker A: We buggered off. Yeah, we went to Southeast Asia. We went to. Yep. We went to Vietnam and Cambodia. And we. Because of the sort of level of grief that losing a child inflicts on you, it's a unique and rare pain and we didn't quite know how to deal with it. We knew we had to get away and we thought, well, let's go and surround ourselves, at least for a bit, with people that have suffered worse than us, because that's a good way, I think, of giving you perspective in anything in life. And we went to Southeast Asia and worked in orphanages for either children who had lost their parents or children who had been mentally and physically afflicted by Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
So that's what we did. And we spent time with these kids, either sick children or children with special needs, or adults who had lost children too, who were also volunteers in these places. And it was incredible. We found happiness and joy in those places that I haven't really found since, because you just go, well, if they can walk around and find joy in life, so can I.
[00:19:10] Speaker C: And is that how Murray Parish. Yeah, Murray Parish charity happened.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: Yes, it was from. Inspired by what you saw.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Yes, it was. I mean, we, The Murray Parish Trust is a children's charity, fundamentally, and what we do now, we didn't do then, we were raising money for pediatric facilities for the south of England, but it just grew and grew and grew. And I think it's because the story is, I guess we're told, is a powerful story. You know, a young couple who lose a child, people want to support them, people want to donate. That's how the Murray Parish Trust started off as a small kitchen table charity, a therapeutic charity, really.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Now it's a lot about supporting the mental health children, which is fabulous because mental health epidemic is another problem.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we pivoted during the pandemic, actually, when we, when we're in a position, you know, we had a lot of support, we had the coffers were healthy and we started off by donating to the nurses, but it wasn't strictly on brand for our charity as a pediatric charity. And then of course, the mental health situation in children was exposed and has been like Pandora's box. So Sarah and I decided, well, let's pivot towards that. So we raised funds for sick children's mental health and also their immediate families. Because if you think about it, if you've got a child with a, with a, with a brain tumor or cancer lying on a ward in a hospital and they're being told devastating news on a daily basis by ward doctors who literally can spend five minutes with them before they then move on to the next bed. And the parents are all, and the brothers and sisters are all sat around the bed and life changing news. And what do they do with that? You know, you need, they need support.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: And what did you do with your pain? Because you said that therapy didn't really work and I think you ended up on a fishing bank.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: I did. I ended up in a river. Not on the bank, actually, in the middle of a river. I did. It's well documented.
Nothing really. Once I got back, we got back from Southeast Asia, I didn't know how to cope with what had just happened. We were living out in the middle of nowhere in rural Hampshire and I knew that I liked fishing and I knew I.
[00:21:27] Speaker C: How did you like fishing? Was it something you'd done as a child?
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but not to the extent that I, I do it now. I started off fishing like a lot of kids do in the SEAs around the UK and our particular destination holiday was North Wales because we, we come from the northwest and I, we were dragged out on horrible mackerel trawlers.
Yes.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Your father was quite tough on you, wasn't he?
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Well, he was of that generation. Yeah. He would take us out, come. Hello. High water on rolling Irish, on a. On a chugboat that just went three knots and spewed out diesel fumes everywhere. This is my recollection of it as a child with oversized life jackets in the freezing cold. If you were seasick, you were told to stand in a bucket and look at the horizon. It was, in fact. Sounds a bit like the Victorian navy, doesn't it? Yeah. Mackerel guts everywhere. And it was. It was fun to a point, but quite. Quite dramatic. And then my grandfather, who was a much. A much milder man, should we say, he took me fly fishing on a reservoir in Macclesfield, and I. It was very different experience than killing mackerel out at sea. And I loved it.
Fantastic. Writers have tried to pin down what it is about fly fishing. That poetic nature of casting this one back and forth. The sound of the fly and the line, the being in beautiful places all the time because, you know, game fish don't reside in ugly places. On the whole, the solitary nature of it, the. The constantly thinking about where should I cast, what fly should I use?
There's a myriad of things that can keep you busy, and that just appealed to me a lot more. So that was the thing that rescued me. Yeah.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: So you started fishing. So when did you fall in love with it?
[00:23:18] Speaker A: That's a really good question. I fell in love with it when I discovered salmon fishing. And it's. For fly fishermen. It's very rarely the gateway fish, the Atlantic salmon. A, because they're not in many places, you know, you have to travel, so it's expensive, and B, is expensive to. To. To fish for them, you know, so. So you have to have a bit of money. Well, you don't, actually, but that's definitely the perception. That's the perception, and we're trying to destigmatize that perception, but a friend of mine called Lee Hooks took me salmon fishing and I went up to the. To the North Esk, up in Scotland and fell in. In February, within two hours, you literally.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Fell in the water.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: I fell in because I figured that the deeper you waited, the more likely it is to catch fish. You know, that was mine.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: You were a newbie.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: I was a complete newbie. And. And I've lost. I can't tell you how many phones that I've lost. Salmon fishing, it really is a. You know, it's an obsession. It's a stupid obsession because they call it the fish of a thousand cast. How many times you have to cast before you have any hope of, of hooking into one of these incredibly rare fish.
[00:24:24] Speaker C: It's not really about the catching of the fish though, is it?
[00:24:28] Speaker A: It's not.
The. The artist in me says, no, it's not. It's about standing there and appreciating the environment and the company you got. For three days you stay in a, you know, a BNB or whatever it is and you spend 10 hours a day casting away and your shoulders and your arms about to fall off and you have a great time doing it. But you're right, it's not about catching fish. Otherwise I wouldn't keep doing it. But getting to my point, when you do catch a fish, it's one of the most wonderful things in the world. Catching a salmon. I'm not talking about catching a fish. I'm talking about catching an Atlantic salmon, a wild Atlantic salmon. And that isn't for everybody, but for me there's something about that wild animal that's come from thousands of miles away and come back to its. It's river of home where it was born. And you are just meeting it on the way briefly before you release it. And it's an immensely powerful fish. When you hook into one, they're incredibly beautiful to look at. I'm not even scratching the surface. You must read Ted Hughes or a poet like that in order to really get the full verbal interpretation of what it's like to hook into a salmon. But. But for me, there is no better feeling in the world.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: We'll go back to Ted Hughes later on, but in the meantime, I think I would like to explore the catch and release.
Not necessarily everybody who's listening to this will know about salmon fishing and will know that 99.9% of the time the salmon is released back. Because I think there might be some people saying, well, why are you catching fish when the rivers are so polluted, etc. So there's a whole big discussion around that. But first of all, can we actually go into, you know, a salmon is a sentient being. I think most people would now recognize that. So how much trauma will it be feeling?
[00:26:21] Speaker A: I would love to know the answer because I think it would certainly inform some decisions I make. I would like to think that from what we're told, that the nerve endings in the lips, depending on where the salmon is in its cycle, aren't particularly abundant. So it's not like you or I having a sharp implement hooked into our, into our lips. But we can't necessarily prove that beyond reasonable doubt. So what we do as anglers is we play that fish and get it in the net as quickly as we can and we make sure it's okay and we release it. But, but, but that doesn't mitigate the argument. What are you doing sticking a hook in a fish's mouth? And you know what? I would love to have a really robust argument, but fundamentally, the global argument is the awareness and the investment that salmon angling brings into a catchment and into the communities there and into the business there. And if you strip out all the money and just think about the fish itself, if you took salmon anglers out of the equation, those rivers would undoubtedly suffer. And if those rivers suffer, the salmon would, won't be coming back. So are we a necessary evil? I would argue, yes, I wouldn't argue evil. But that, that, that's a glib term that I'm going to use because without us, I'm, it's not, I'm just for, for clarity, this isn't the same argument that a, a trophy lion hunter or elephant hunter might use, you know, in, in on the Serengeti.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: It's more like ecotourism, isn't it? It's about people going to the, going to these places. In your case, it's the river in Africa, it's on safari. And as a result of what they see, there is far greater awareness around the cons and far more support for the conservation issues that are going on. And this brings us neatly into activism. So you could have just carried on fishing, doing something you like, but clearly you and your wife have inside you something which basically when you see something going wrong, you want to do something about it or you want to support. And so you became an activist.
How did you become aware that the waters were in trouble?
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Well, the rivers were in trouble as an, as an angler, as a fly fish, fly fishing angler. You are at the coal face all the time in a river. You are the guardian of that river in many respects. We see when pollution comes in, we see when fish are suffering, we see when fish are there, when they're not there, we see when the bottom should be, you know, bright gravel and it's covered in putrid algae. All sorts of.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: Robert McFarlane described it as blistered fish, algal blooms, sewage and fungus sludging the riverbed.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:29:07] Speaker C: He really has a good phrase.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: He has a great turn of phrases. Mr. McFarlane, I wish I did. I wish that. But. But that. Exactly what he said. We are there noticing all this and, and I suddenly thought it wasn't so much. I didn't wake up and go, I'm going to be an activist. Because that term activist, I think is a bit old hat. It sort of has negative connotations a little bit. And I think we should all be active and proactive with our environment as long as the government continue to fail us, because that's, that's how the democracy is meant to work.
[00:29:44] Speaker C: So just let me explain to Rhys. You're actually an active ambassador for the Angling Trust and the Atlantic Salmon Trust and you founded Activist Anglers.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Activist Anglers. There's a mouthful. So that I founded that to try and encourage anglers to, to use their voice and to. And to empower them, to make them realize that they are a huge voice. I mean, there are a lot of.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Fishermen out there, about 3 million in the country.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you look at Surface Against Sewage Surfers now are a huge voice in for our environment, for the conservation of our. Of our coastlines and our rivers. And I thought we need something like that for the anglers because we're a huge body and we have opinions, rightly or wrongly.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: What do they. What they do, reports they support.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Well, so the Angling Trust, fundamentally speaking, represent anglers and fisheries up and down the country. And if you are a member, the perks you get are tenfold. You can you anything from. From discount on fishing to support through Fish Legal, which is another fantastic ngo. I describe them as a band of. Of renegade Robin Hood, star warrior lawyers that literally have been working quietly behind the scenes, holding the government to account and taking polluters to task since the 1950s and have never lost a case. And they go about it quietly and very diligently, much like the Atlantic Salmon Trust, who are another fantastic ngo, who are all about science and research and implementing that rather than campaigning, which also has a space. But I prefer to support those that sort of quietly do and get things done.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: So can we talk about the Atlantic salmon, the wildlife salmon, all day long?
[00:31:34] Speaker A: I can.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Let's start, first of all, looking at the challenges. I mean, we've got the fish industry, we've got climate warming. There's a wonderful film, river woods, about the heating up of the rivers and Tell me more.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: I think what you inadvertently did then, Annabel, was tell the listeners that the Atlantic salmon is connected to all those things. It is a barometer for climate warming, for aquaculture in the form of open Pen salmon farms for the heating up of our seas, for the heating up of rivers. It really is a keystone species, and that's what's so wonderful about it. And this is nothing to do with angling anymore. This is from a conservation angle. This fish is incredibly important. It's almost the linchpin of all those challenges that our environments face. Certainly in the world of fresh water and salt water, it being an anadromous species, this fish we can learn a huge amount from. And they're an endangered species now. You know, since December last year, they are officially endangered. If they continue on the trajectory that they're on now, they will be gone by 2050.
[00:32:49] Speaker C: So if you want to stop that or reverse that number, is the Angling Trust the best people to get behind.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: The Atlantic Salmon Trust. Listen, There are many NGOs, all of them doing equally sterling work. And of course they need support. And if you can afford to support them in any way, shape or form financially, please do. Or else if you can't afford to do it financially, learn about the plight of this fish and spread awareness. I'm a huge believer in storytelling and the power of storytelling. And I think I'm astounded by the amount of people I tell about this fish on a daily basis who will listen to me just say, I had no idea.
[00:33:30] Speaker C: Well, I had no idea that sometimes salmon can be found in the chalk streams.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah, chalk stream salmon. So the chalk streams, let's just put them, place them geographically. They're fundamentally. Most of them are on the south, in the south of England, and the ones that hold salmon certainly are on the south coast of England and there are very few of them left. 200 were counted over the fish counter on, I think it was the test or the itchen last year. So that's an unsustainable.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: And let's just explain what a chalk stream is because I love the spongy bit, which I didn't realize about. So you tell me about.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: So a chalk stream is, how can I put it succinctly? A chalk stream is a river that is spring fed from a chalk massive chalk bed aquifer, where it stays in certain places for 40, 30, 40 years, would you believe, before it then reemerges beneath the ground, somewhat purified and filtered by the chalk spewed up into the river at a constant temperature with a very neutral ph.
So it's a really unique habitat, an ecosystem for all life. They're incredibly rare and incredibly virile if we let them thrive. But within those rivers, there Is this unique fish, if you're lucky, the froome, the test, the itchen, the mion, a couple of others have these chalk stream salmon, and they have. There are very few of them left, but they are a subspecies of the Atlantic salmon. They are Atlantic salmon, but they're specific to chalk streams. They look different. They're very, very perfect specimens if you know what to look for. And Charles Rainsley Wilson believes, and I happen to subscribe to this theory, is that the ice sheets never made it as far as the south coast of England. And so that these chalk streams were spared being iced over. And what that meant was the chalk stream salmon. They were like a Noah's ark for the salmon. And then when the ice sheets receded, we're talking millions of years, you know, These chalk stream salmon then became more and more prolific as they spread out into rivers around the coast and potentially are the. Are the forefathers, if that's the right word, of all Atlantic salmon in the North Atlantic basin at the moment, very difficult to prove. But that's another reason it's so important that we, that we keep them from going extinct. And if I can drill down and do all I can and save the chalk stream salmon, or do my best to get the support to save it, then that's. I think that's my job.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: And that's why you had this exhibition, Creatures of Light.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker C: So tell me about it.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: Creatures of Light. So I. So I paint a bit.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: But you also, you did another exhibition called In Float.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: I did, yeah.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: By Constable. Only a year before.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that was last year. But that was a two, three year work in progress. Yeah. I had an exhibition called Inflow, where I hung my. My huge abstract paintings next to John Constable's Bucolic Landscapes, because some wonderful gallery owner down in Winchester thought that that would be a good idea. And it turned out to be. But it, you know, scared the hell out of me. But off the back of that, someone said, listen, you should marry your activism and your art more. There should be more overlap there. So I thought about it. I thought, how am I going to do that? Maybe why don't we try sinking canvases for long periods of time in salmon rivers during spawning season, because that's sort of metaphorical with rebirth and hope, I guess, and then paint on them, depending on what river they'd been in and what that river means to me. And that's what I did. It was a huge collaboration, not just with the rivers themselves, but with the people who work and live on the rivers. Because I couldn't have done it without them. The river keepers, gillies predominantly, who I've got to know over the years, were so kind to me and would, over the winter months, would go and check every now and then when there'd been a huge storm where my canvas was. And I imagine they moved. Yeah, they moved around. Yeah. Even though they were tethered to big rocks and weights or tethered to the trees on the banks. Of course, these rivers, incredibly powerful when they. When they flood. So. And they came back in all sort of states of disrepair and they were torn and, you know, really, really. What's the word marked by the river? And I took them back and I dried them out and I looked at them, depending on what I'd been given, and painted various messages is too strong a word, but evocative feelings through color, I guess, onto them and then frame them. And I had an exhibition called Creatures of Light, because you're going to ask me why, so I'm going to preempt that. Ted Hughes, who is a wonderful poet, was a wonderful poet, poet laureate, he was also a keen fly fisherman and loved his salmon. He had this weird obsession with them, it seems like I do. And he wrote this wonderful poem and one of many about salmon, but one in particular called that Morning. And the last couple of lines are, and there we stood alive in the river of light amongst the creatures of light. Creatures of light.
And it's a. It's a poem that he wrote about him and his son Nick when they were fishing for salmon in Alaska. And it's just a beautiful, metaphysical, anthropomorphic, proper old school Ted Hughes poem that just blows your mind. And I just thought, creatures of light, if you want. If. If he sees these fish as creatures of light, then who am I to argue with that? That's exactly what they are.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: That's just beautiful. I should finish it there, but I'm not going to because I've just got a couple more questions.
You are meeting with Becca Blease, I believe, for Resurgence, and you're doing a piece together, beyond the Seas.
Why is it you're doing the piece? What is it you want to say?
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Beyond the seas.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: I mean, I'm also thinking about your podcast. Podcast, which of course goes to many seas.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, beyond the Seas is so the podcast. Thank you for mentioning that. The last salmon. We're just gearing up season two. Yes, we do go beyond the seas. We go over to the North Atlantic and to the Pacific to look at the Pacific salmon and the activist work that's going on over there. But it's predominantly what I want to talk about is aquaculture and fish farming and the fact that these very powerful dynastic Norwegian companies, conglomerates really, that have started aquaculture off in the 1960s and 70s and have, have designed this, what we call a frankenfish, but it's a lab grown really, Atlantic salmon. It has no particular bearing or, or relation to, to the wild salmon.
[00:40:06] Speaker C: Frankenfish. Just explain modified.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: It's a genetically enhanced, genetically modified farmed fish for the table that is farmed in open net pens in the coastal estuaries all around the world, as far as Tasmania, British Columbia, up in Canada, around the west coast of Scotland, Iceland, Norway.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: And they are brilliant at growing their business because you could talk about the.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Japan project of the 1980s, the way they persuaded the Japanese that they should put Atlantic salmon on their sushi.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: And we all thought that salmon soup was part of sushi and we all.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Think salmon is part of sushi. Sushi. No blinding piece of marketing, don't we? See that orange and that white sushi. There's no Atlantic salmon in Japan. Japan's nowhere near the Atlantic. Except the Norwegians went, put it on and we'll, we'll sell it to you. And it just exploded. But when people hear that, and people hear about the nefarious nature and the welfare, the welfare, grotesque welfare conditions that these fish, the mortality rate, 25% of them die in these pens. And you're talking about hundreds of thousands, you know, on these fish farms, the disease that they spread, the lice that then spread to the wild stock. When there's a storm, hundreds of thousands literally can escape. Like, like what happened in Iceland last September, I think it was.
[00:41:28] Speaker C: You've got escapees going up 500 different.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: Rivers, up 500 pristine Icelandic rivers. Iceland, as we know, is one of the last bastions on earth when it comes to the environment. And the rivers there are just stunning. And that's why, that's where the Atlantic salmon are still reasonably healthy. But the Icelandic government said, well, we'll have a bit of that. And they allowed the Norwegians to put fish farms. And then there was a storm last September, as there is out at sea, and it bashed the nets to bits. Hundreds of thousands of fish escaped. The Norwegians panicked because obviously, from a PR point of view, it's terrible. And once they breed with the wild stock, within two generations, they think that wild stock, the DNA is completely compromised. And this is a species that is in real critical danger of becoming unsustainable when it comes to being a wild animal. So millions of years of genetics and evolution wiped out within 10 years because of these fish farms. It's terrible. And I'll tell you this story and you'll be gobsmacked and you probably won't eat farm salmon again, which is great because that's what we. How we need to hit them through the consumer. But it's jaw dropping how ignorance is still rife when it comes to that fish.
[00:42:46] Speaker C: You are obviously an activist. That's in your DNA, it's in your heart. You're passionate about it. I think I'm actually moved to say something which is there has never been a time when activism, or another word, let's use that word, is needed, that we can all be activists, we can all make a statement. And by just spreading the story, telling it, whether it's for Instagram on social media, and you're writing about it for resurgence. And so I'm going to leave you with one last question. What is your hope for the future?
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Well, my hope for the future is to have hope and to keep hope alive. Because I think hope is the only thing that is going to slay the apathy that it seems the powers that be are very happy with the status quo being riddled with this apathy because it's a good way of controlling us. Now, that sounds a little bit paranoid, but it's kind of true. If it's not those that in charge, it's certainly big industries such as fish farms. Apathy and ignorance. I think if you have hope, then you can never sit still for any longer than a couple of minutes without wanting to do something to make a change. Even if that change, as you just so brilliantly said, is just sharing a story, is literally turning to the person to your left or right and saying, did you know? Then you are doing something really meaningful and really powerful. So just keep talking about all these things. That's the best thing you can do.
[00:44:12] Speaker C: Jim Murray, you couldn't have put it better. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing in so many different ways. And you certainly have one fan.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: Phil, thank you. That's one more than I had this morning. Thank you.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please leave us a review wherever you're listening and recommend this series to anyone who you.
[00:44:42] Speaker C: Think might enjoy it too.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: I'll be back in a fortnight talking to Roger Tempest and Paris Acrel, asking why, after a thousand years, Roger has changed the name of his family home to Broughton sanctuary.
And as world leaders fly into Switzerland for the annual meeting held by the World Economic Forum, we will consider whether it isn't time for a spiritual Davos.
This episode was produced by Pete Norton and brought to you by the Resurgence Trust, a movement, a magazine and a manifesto for hope.
To find out more about their work, click the link in the show notes of this episode. I'm Annabelle Heseltine, and to thank you for listening to Hope Springs.
