A Mass Crustacean Die-Off Documentary Starts With 'No Official Cause'
On 25 September 2021, thousands of dead and dying crustaceans washed up on beaches in Yorkshire and the north-east of England. Jeanie Finlay's documentary All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea is not setting out to find what killed the crabs and lobsters.
Finlay says she can't offer an easy answer to what happened: there isn't an official cause. What she can do, she says, is show the audience what that feels like.
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The official explanations are part of the story: after carrying out their own tests, the authorities denied a causal link, blaming an algae bloom and later a novel pathogen. People who live and work around the Tees estuary disagreed.
An absence of an official cause is not the same as no cause. Finlay is right that she can't offer an easy answer, but a film can honor uncertainty without letting it harden into the conclusion.