Britain's ailing seaside towns weren't always so murky and grey

Telegraph

4 days ago

The sea at Eastbourne was its usual thick beige colour this weekend, but my sister checked her sewage app and said it was safe to swim. And it was lovely, because sea swims always are. But it did occur to me, as I bobbed in the turbid brown waves, nose held carefully aloft, that it would be reassuring to be able to see my legs.
Most people assume – as I did, until recently – that the murkiness of the English sea is an unfortunate but timeless feature of our geography. Not so. For most of history, the waters around this island were, on a calm day, as crystalline and blue as those of Greece, Bermuda or Norway.
If you don't believe me, here is an eye-witness account. When English seaside towns were at their late-Victorian zenith, this newspaper had a regular column of coastal news, entitled By the Silver Sea. 'Seldom has Brighton looked so gay; never could its obvious etymology have been more triumphantly justified,' declares a typically enthusiastic dispatch. 'Bright was the parade with well-dressed crowds and gaily flaunting pennons; bright was the clear green sea with its purple streaks and patches of deep growing seaweed that clings to the chalk beneath…'
In Folkestone, 'the deep blue sea is glass like'. In Sanddown, 'the blue water, heated to a comfortable temperature by washing over the sun-warmed sands, ripples up to the steps [of the bathing machine], and the soft sand slopes gradually, but not too slowly, to any depth one desires'. These archives reveal an English sea of pellucid natural beauty, not unlike the kind we now go abroad in search of.
The decline of England's seaside towns is usually ascribed to social and economic factors: the advent of cheap flights in the Seventies luring holiday makers away to more exotic climes. But what if it was also a response to the worsening condition of our seaside, and the sea itself?
The clarity of seawater is measured by lowering a white disc, known as a Secchi disc, into the sea until it becomes invisible to the naked eye. Between 1900 and 2000, the Secchi depth measurement of the North Sea reduced by around 50 per cent, with most of that decline occurring in the latter half of the century. Not coincidentally, this was when modern industrial farming took off, leading to a huge increase in soil erosion and chemical run-off.
The agricultural pollution billowing out from our rivers is now met, at sea, by clouds of sediment caused by coastal erosion, deep sea trawling, dredging and mining. Add the increasingly frequent overflows from our overstretched sewerage system, stir it all together, and you get the chilly brown soup that you and I have come, without realising it, to mistake for normal.
There is a lot that could be done to restore our seas to their former limpidity, from planting cover crops, which reduce soil erosion, to updating our sewers and regulating the fishing industry. But these changes won't happen without some kind of public clamour. And why would the public clamour for something it has forgotten ever existed?
Whereas most people still remember our once-clean rivers – and get correspondingly exercised about their pollution – generations of English girls and boys have now grown up holidaying beside a gruel-coloured sea. Or, more likely, taking a short flight to somewhere that still has a clear blue vista.