On a blustery morning in May on Shoreham-by-Sea’s west beach, Eric Smith and George Short are pointing out treasures the waves have left on the tideline. Cuttlefish bones and balls of whelk eggs, they say, are evidence of recovering marine habitats.
“Just give nature a bit of space and it will come back” says Smith, 76, a former lorry driver by trade, freediver by choice. He first started diving in Sussex coastal waters at the age of 11, and still recalls the underwater “garden of Eden” of his childhood, a kelp forest teeming with bream, lobsters and cuttlefish that stretched 40km between Shoreham and Selsey Bill. It vanished after years of intensive trawling, a destructive form of fishing involving dragging heavy nets along the seabed.
For decades, Smith was a lone voice in his community, battling to stop trawlers further destroying the seabed that hosted the kelp forest, a nursery and spawning ground for fish and other marine life and one of the country’s most biodiverse ecosystems.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
He first started diving in Sussex coastal waters at the age of 11, and still recalls the underwater “garden of Eden” of his childhood, a kelp forest teeming with bream, lobsters and cuttlefish that stretched 40km between Shoreham and Selsey Bill.
For decades, Smith was a lone voice in his community, battling to stop trawlers further destroying the seabed that hosted the kelp forest, a nursery and spawning ground for fish and other marine life and one of the country’s most biodiverse ecosystems.
It has been estimated that a healthy kelp forest in Sussex could be worth up to £3.1m, taking in fishery resources, coastal protection, water quality maintenance, carbon sequestration, as well as tourism and recreation, according to a study by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland.
A few miles inland, near the Norman village of Bramber, the green paths of the South Downs Way run along the banks of the Adur, as swans make their way downstream.
About 27 farmers and landowners have signed up to the Weald to Waves project, which aims to create a nature-rich corridor to the sea, by reviving floodplains, increasing biodiversity and restoring the river to its prewar, more free-flowing state.
The nature corridor will eventually link up with the Knepp estate, West Sussex, home to the first white stork born in the wild in Britain for 600 years, and one of the UK’s best-known rewilding projects, run by biodiversity campaigner Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell.
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