[Intro Music]
Dave Erasmus:
This is Shaping Places, the podcast where we meet the people helping to shape the world around us and ask them to reflect on the places that have shaped them. I'm Dave Erasmus, speaker, coach, and thinker, and I enjoy turning big questions into impactful projects for others. I'm joined by my co-host, Matt Mason, Head of Innovation and Skills at The Crown Estate, and together we work with The Conduit on impact and sustainability.
Our guests today are Eric and Catrine, a father and daughter pair of free divers who have campaigned tirelessly to protect local kelp forests. And since the 2021 trawler ban, they've already seen signs of recovery and they're carrying that momentum forward through Sussex Underwater, a community group dedicated to protecting and educating about marine life.
So today, we'll dive into these magical underwater worlds, hear how they've shaped Eric and Katrina, and discover why they're determined to protect them. Welcome.
Catrine Priestly:
Hi Dave. Nice to be here. Thanks for having us with you.
Eric Smith:
It's really good to get here. We've been looking forward to this for a while.
Dave Erasmus:
Eric, let's start with you. Why don't you tell us a bit about where you grew up?
Eric Smith:
Well, I'd like, I'd like to start back a bit further with, with my father. He came from the Fenlands, country boy. In 1938. Joined the Army and was sent out with the Expeditionary Forces to Belgium and he actually got right back to Dunkirk and being a country lad, he bought his troop back.
You can look on the flatland, like in northern France, it's completely flat and there'd be people out there you can't see because they've got dykes. And dad knew that the poachers walked on the bottom of the dykes, and he brought his whole troop back to Dunkirk intact. Mm-hmm. And then commandeered a rowing boat and got back from there.
So, and all our holidays were spent in the Fenlands, although he stayed down here from the Fens, he met my mum who was a Brighton lady. All our colleagues were in the Fens so he taught me the way to the country.
Dave Erasmus:
So he was teaching you sort of how to be at one with nature for the sake of safety.
Eric Smith:
Exactly. Exactly. Being at one with nature.
Dave Erasmus:
And you mentioned your mum as a Brighton lady. So is that where you grew up?
Eric Smith:
Oh yeah. Brighton and Hove. Brighton and Hove mainly. And Shoreham in my later life, obviously.
Catrine Priestly:
I think you talk about it, don't you Dad, like it's your Garden of Eden that in your childhood, wasn't it?
Eric Smith:
It was, yeah. Well, I think my basic thing in life is to get the seas back to what they were when I was a child.
You imagine the year, um, 1959 when I started diving, uh, as an 11-year-old. The seas had been virtually closed since 1939, right around to ‘44. The beaches weren't open again really till ‘52. The trawlers had been taken away to requisition by the navy, be used as minesweepers, or whatever you want, whether they want to use them for, they hadn't really started working again, so the fish had a 10-year reprieve, really - it was just a different world.
Dave Erasmus:
Just thinking about the fact that you sort of lived your life as a teenager in the water…
Eric Smith:
Well, when I first encountered the water I was standing on, I’d stand on the water's edge of an 11-year-old and I can't remember, I was fishing, I was just down the beach, we walked down the beach. We only lived about a mile away, so we almost walked down there, a bunch of kids. And a fella got out with a wetsuit on - big, big fella, I think he was named Dead-Eye Nick, because he used to go to fishing. He was a local hero in the paper. And I thought, oh - he’d got a big fish out - I could do that.
And at the same time I've been watching Sea Hunt on, on television, uh, that was Lloyd Bridges back in 1959 and doing impossible things underwater. I went home, took out my life savings at the time, that was 50p, 10 shillings and, uh, bought a complete kit from Woolworths, you know.
Dave Erasmus:
Oh wow.
Eric Smith:
Face mask, snorkel, fins. The funny thing is, the mask was actually not a lot of good. It was plastic, so all the places had plastic masks, but my dad actually whittled down a piece of glass where it's proper glass, there's no refraction, so you could see out it a lot easier. And he put a strap on it. And, um, off I went. I never looked back. The first day, 13, 14 kids filled me out to sea. Lovely flat white sand. And then we saw black weed, the kelp. ‘What, what the hell is that?’ From day one, you could realise, oh, the life that was in this kelp. And kelp stayed with me for the rest of my life really?
So I’d swim out to see perhaps half a mile, three quarters of a mile, or maybe a mile, just to get out the way, and all I could perhaps hear is one dog on the beach and you dive down. You're part of nature. Absolutely.
Dave Erasmus:
So it's peaceful out there for you, a mile out.
Eric Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, completely.
Dave Erasmus:
Did you notice a difference between yourself and your friends that didn't spend time in the water?
Eric Smith:
Not really-
Dave Erasmus:
Like, can you, did you, did you think about how it, it might have shaped you or did it just feel-?
Eric Smith:
Yeah. No, it wasn't. No, it, I, I, it, how can I explain it?
Catrine Priestly:
I think it's made you a very mindful person and also a very optimistic person.
Eric Smith:
Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
So dad has a very different attitude to a lot of people, I think, in that way that, because he's been in the sea for so long and he has that mindful environment around him so much, you do become like you’re saying, part of nature. Now I know because I've learned to dive over the last couple of years. I understand now what dad's been going on about all these years, that actually it is a very mindful way to be because you’re just completely immersed in the environment.

And when I was little, my first words were, ‘Daddy's gone diving.’ Literally!
Eric Smith:
I’d just, I just start to elaborate on that. That was, that was to wind my friends up. It might be blowing a hurricane in January and they’d ring up and say, ‘Is your dad in?’, ‘No, he's out diving.’
Catrine Priestly:
Um, but yeah, it's shaped you in a certain way, hasn't it? And you've become that sort of person that is very much more mindful, optimistic person because of it.
Eric Smith:
It's all about relaxation as well. It's better to dive inside of it because if you are relaxed, stuff will come to you. The fish know you are there. I will be in one meter visibility. A shoulder bass will come around and scatter, but always come back to me.
Dave Erasmus:
I'm just keen to provoke and poke a little more into that ‘Garden of Eden’ that you grew up with. So it was actually a flourishing biodiverse haven when you were a teenager.
Eric Smith:
Yeah, because the kelp was there. The kelp ran all the way from Eastbourne, virtually right to the Isle of Wight and carry on down to the west country that was cleaning the water.
Mm-hmm. I can remember one day in particular where we was going out to a local wreck called the Indiana about a mile and half from Worthing. And as we went along in the boat, in the shallows, the water's dirty. Mm. Came back two or three hours later. And the world was crystal clear. Mm-hmm. Because the kelp kept all that stuff. All that bits and pieces and holds it outta suspension.
Dave Erasmus:
So the kelp is a good thing.
Eric Smith:
Oh, unbelievable.
Catrine Priestly:
It's like our rainforest, isn't it? That's the way we describe it. It's like our rainforest. It is like our rainforest. The biodiversity that you get within a kelp forest. 80,000 different creatures you can get in a kelp forest.
Yeah. It's amazing, but also it does lots of things, doesn't it? 'cause it captures carbon as well. Like dad was saying, it filters the water. It's a nursery ground for all the species that we have in the sea. It's a nursery ground for them. It protects them from other predators, but it also stops the beaches washing away.
Matt Mason:
I'd, I'd love to drag you out of the sea. I'd love to hear about. Hove was like?
Eric Smith:
It makes you think a lot simpler than it was these days. Far as high rise buildings, buses came on time, my house a miles from the sea. But we would walk down the sea front, obviously no health and safety 'cause we'd go the wrong side of the railings on the beach, you know, with waves and stones crashing overhead. How we didn't ever get dragged out the sea. I don't know. Yeah. I'll take for instance, we always carried knives. Mm. You know, for cutting bits of wood, but we'd never, ever. Think of using it for any other reason than mucking around as kids.
Dave Erasmus:
So was it a good place to grow up in?
Eric Smith:
Oh yeah. Brilliant. Yeah, mum used to kick us out.
Well, we kicked ourselves out actually. Um, and we, we'd be off over the downs and you'd come back when dinner with really late in the evening and, and obviously we knew the local downs as well. We knew where the rabbits were and everything else. It. Mm. Incredible really. Yeah. It’s a different world. Definitely a different world.
It's a lot more diverse Hove. But when you go to the Fen that was where my dad used to live, it is flat of the pancake and the jobs were on the land, and the land was actually becoming less dependent on people. My father came down to Preston Barracks for the Royal Artillery after he trained at Woolwich Arsenal, and he met my mum there.
And so when he eventually came back from the war, six years later, well they, they married in 44 actually, but. He had the option of staying here or going home and mm-hmm. Hove was a lot more diverse, more things to do. So I think that's why they stayed here, luckily for me.
Catrine Priestly:
Oh yeah.
Matt Mason:
It's very amongst the most diverse places in the country, it's very place to live.
Catrine Priestly:
Yeah.
Eric Smith:
We live in shoreham now where you’ve got the downs.
Catrine Priestly:
It's a wonderful place to live shoreham because you've got literally the downs right behind you. You've got the river and you've got the sea, so you've got kind of everything and it feels like, I think what you're saying is you've got that lovely hub of a nice town and very kind of up and coming town with brilliant culture, but then you've also got surrounding it, you've got nature. Mm-hmm. And I love that as well growing up in Shoham as well. And I love that feeling of going out in nature, being able to access it so easily.
Dave Erasmus:
What changed? What's been changing from that Garden of Eden that you grew up in? What happened?
Eric Smith:
It sneaked up on us. Really. I've been keeping diaries all my life. When I look back on the diary, looking up the kelp, it read like a horror story. Until, you know, by 2003, 2004, the big beds are gone. And we got pictures actually from 20 years ago. We found a historic film, which wasn't on kelp, but it was maintenance work. And we could look at the kelp, the difference in that 20 years areas that used to be covered in kelp. The, the, the trawling were working, they couldn't get into the area.
Catrine Priestly:
Your talking about trawling aren't you?
Eric Smith:
Yeah
Catrine Priestly:
This is a bit, doesn't always get explained. So a trawler boat is different to a normal what we call a sustainable fishing boat, a set boat with, um, so, um, it doesn't have set nets. It has, well it has these nets that kind of are towed along and basically at the back of the boat, a very, very heavy net with chains kind of holding it together and it will pull it along the seabed. Mm-hmm. Actually along the floor of the seabed. Mm-hmm. So it's quite different to a, a normal fisherman going out with their set nets and kind of mm-hmm. Taking fish from it.
Dave Erasmus:
Fishermen, local fishermen would be pulling stuff from the middle of the water. For example.
Eric Smith:
We were sit, sitting it, yeah. To put down no damage, pull 'em back up. They haven't damaged the bottom.
Dave Erasmus:
Oh, you mean they're hanging from a buoy, or something like that?
Eric Smith:
Yeah. Well, yeah, on buoys, they'd just lay them on the bottom, but when they're pulled up, they don't pull the bottom up with them, but the big trawler is just go across the bottom. Then they paired the boats up. They put a trawler on the back, one and a half times as big. They even went to the degree one time and got an eye witness on it. They put change between the boats to get the kelp out the way.
Catrine Priestly:
They paired up the net that they were towing between them was in twice as big. Mm, twice as heavy. And the thing is, it was for three months, May, April, early June, every year, 30 years.
What we explain on some of our talks weekend is if you've got an ancient woodland, which wasn't ancient woodland, it'd been there since the last ice age. So you've got an ancient woodland and the man wants to catch a rabbit. So he come, he comes in with a bulldozer. Mm-hmm. Bulldozer flat takes two rabbits away, and then comes back every day for three months for 30 years. There's no ancient forest left.
Dave Erasmus:
Yeah. If you're in a woodland trying to catch a rabbit, you might step on a couple of plants. You might take out two or three bits. Yeah. Trying to get one. Yeah. But you were talking about 80,000 species. Yes. Of which it's probably capturing most of that when it's dragging along the bottom.
Catrine Priestly:
This is the other thing with trawling. It's indiscriminate. Mm. Whereas a sustainable fisherman will be looking for a certain type of fish, when he is fishing, and putting others back, that he might catch. A trawler comes along and would just take everything in its wake. And that's, that's the other problem. It's so indiscriminate.
Eric Smith:
So they've taken the cap away. And finally they break through the crush, what we call the crush, which is all being bin muscles and everything else. And then the boulders become loose and the boulders start rolling around in the big storms like giant cannonballs or marbles or the bottom just degrades and degrades and degrades. You can't destroy a farm and, and it's expected to keep coming back time after time, after time.
Dave Erasmus:
Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
So what started happening then was the fish stocks were obviously then reducing, diving, reducing. Um, and that's when, so people like dad and the divers were seeing it like an eye witness of what was happening.
Eric Smith:
I've been writing letters for a long time to the fisheries. Anyone else that wanted to listen and, and you get either nothing back. Oh, they've got grandfathered rights. And we found out through time that as the fish stocks keep coming down, I'm, I'm gonna go right back to 1870 first. Steam trawler is coming to ground first 20 years.
No problem at all. It loads of fish coming out, and then it started going downhill and it started going downhill and it hit First World Wars, a peak where they stopped fishing, second World Wars, a peak, then it flatlined right down the bottom. But when it flatlined, all they'd done was bought bigger trawlers, heavier gear, more powerful stuff, better technology. Were able to go out and find the fish that were hiding in pockets.
Dave Erasmus:
And so take us into your diary then. Can you take us. Into what it then felt like to be going into these kelp forests
Eric Smith:
Even lack, lack of kelp forest. Mm-hmm. Where that they, they virtually gone. Uh, the one that really hit me really hard was Bogner Reef, which is a natural reef of Bogner Regis. The bream always went on the southwest side. Right on the edge of the reef. They dig these beautiful pods, and the pods are very vital. They dig them down the chalk or the rock base, the ledges turn up. Every time the tire comes across, it gets alienated because they're digging holes or the, they're digging up worms, crustaceans.
The fish are coming into those holes, other fish to feed on what they're digging up. You get razor there, you get cuckoo rash, you get pollock, you get bass coming through in the hundreds, we thought there one week it was actually like a garden, the bean. For want of a better word, the fish were everywhere the following Saturday. Back out again. Expect to see this mind blown world. We come up on the promenade, pair of trawlers going right down the outside of the reef. And when we got there, it was totally destruction. The beds had been smashed. It was bold in the middle of the beds, all the carp had been ripped up, and all we had was fish about three inches long small bream trying to re rebuild their holes. And the boats were so full, it was what they called pop outs. Little two or three inch fish, bream and bass on the surface, dying in rafts. Uh, well that broke my heart. Mm. So. I wrote a letter in an article… I said by god, I’ve got to do something about this. I wrote to everyone I could get in touch with.
I sent the fisheries, it sat on their desk. It took 10 years to get it through, which is another thing that gets my goat. Why would know this wrong? Because it takes so bloody long to get these things sorted.
Dave Erasmus:
So. It took 10 years to get a trawling ban.
Eric Smith:
About 10 years. Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
From that point. So, so dad wrote the article, which in those days, I mean that was the 1990s…
Eric Smith:
2005 the article.
Dave Erasmus:
Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
Cause it was from his heart, you know. It was basically that story he just told about Mm-hmm. Seeing that devastation and, and, and the phish pop outs and everything. It was that story in an article. Mm-hmm. And it was from the heart. It was so passionate and it kind of went viral in terms of, it went into all of the yacht magazines, yachting magazines, maritime magazines, magazine, sailing magazines.
So it was kind of the start of the public becoming aware. Sure. And also, as I say, the fish stocks then reduced, didn't they? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Sussex in shore Fisheries and Conservation Authority then kind of came on board and a, a great guy called Sean Ashworth and was working there at the time and he was like, actually, we need to get this band and we need to be kind of the pioneers in, in the UK to try and get this through.
And he started fighting for it, didn't he? But it took, it, it took a long time because obviously. You know, as we all know, it's those kind of committees. It's the fact that
Eric Smith:
it had to be word perfect as well.
Catrine Priestly:
We had, yeah, actually word perfect. We, and we had the trawler men obviously trying to not get it through.
Eric Smith:
There were quite a few threats involved as well. I think a trawler did try and run me down, but it's, mm, I just take it in my stride
Dave Erasmus:
Not to reduce it from the heart, but when you start to try and filter that into sort of finances and value. It does go back to what do you value? Because you know, if I go into somebody's house to get a cake out and then I destroy the house in the process, we all know the value of a house is much more than the value of a cake.
Eric Smith:
Okay. Stole my cake. That would be the end of it.
Dave Erasmus:
And then the same way you're talking about the woodland, you know, but we don't have a clear sense of what the value of the kelp forest is exactly. In order to make them pay the price from the actions. And that is the, that's the whole rub, isn't it here when we're trying to value nature, not just the individual fish.And what's the cost of that?
Catrine Priestly:
Yeah. This is why, thi s is why we started Sussex Underwater 'cause we were like, when once the ban came in, we were just like, we can't let this happen again.
Dave Erasmus:
So tell us about Sussex Underwater.
Catrine Priestly:
It's kind of like a community group really. We're trying to get the community involved in the sea a lot more. And what we're really aiming to do is try and get people to fall in love with the sea creatures like we are. So we put these things onto our Facebook and our, you know, Instagram accounts and it makes people fall in love with them. And I think that it makes people see that these creatures are so much more than what they thought they were. Mm. Do you know what I mean? I think we have this connection with land animals, but we don't necessarily have the same connection with the sea animals. 'cause I think people never see it. It's outta sight out of mind. And what we're trying to do is help them to fall in love with those creatures. Mm. And then they'll want to help them.
The other thing I wanted to say about when the trawler ban came in was one of the big things that actually happened was a lady called Sarah Kunliffe and basically as a film producer, she met up with Sean Ashworth and, and she is a diver as well.
Eric Smith:
She'd done her graduate course on kelp.
Catrine Priestly:
So she understood that, again, she was one of those people that really understood what was happening and why it was happening. And, um, she produced this film, which was then, um, narrated by David Attenborough and went to millions of people. And that was the catalyst really, for public getting on board and behind this campaign. And I think that's really important when we talk about things like this, that we need to understand that it's a community that does this as well.
Mm-hmm. So dad was the kind of catalyst, uh, you get these key people involved, but. Once the community comes on board and once we can get the community on board, that's when these things really, really do happen.
Eric Smith:
We got a forerunner of what it was gonna be like because we were locked down for a year in COVID.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it, the fishermen weren't fishing. Yeah. Because there's no market there. There's no market. And I've got a friend who lives in, in Portsmouth and the Solent, and he said, never seen the Solent so clear. Mm-hmm. Because all the big boats weren't going out with the big tankers. No, nothing was happening.
Catrine Priestly:
Yeah. And, and we could see the same of our way. Mm-hmm. The, the difference, what we were seeing, just the clarity of the water and everything else. And so it sat on the minister desk for a year. So this was the trawler ban? Yeah. It, it had gone through, hadn't it? But it was sitting on the desk waiting to be approved.
Okay. Mm-hmm. I, during the COVID years. Mm-hmm. Yes. And like that's, we saw as divers that actually in those COVID years, it just really clear the water cleared completely, didn't it? It was amazing.
Eric Smith:
So, um, I thought oh, god, I got to do something about this. I wrote to everyone. I wrote to Boris Johnson, and then we wrote to, um, David Attenborough, King Charles. David Attenborough came back. I just said, can you help? If you get chance to talk to someone? And David Attenborough wrote back then two days later saying, I will talk to someone. Amazing. And next day my MP rang me up and said, it's gone through. I thought, well
Dave Erasmus:
Wow! Yeah, but that shows how it's all, as you said, Catrine, it's all about connecting the dots.
It's connecting the dots. Yeah. You have this moment of the heart in 2005 where you see this stuff and it impacts you to write the letter, then you start using the internet. You start writing letters. That heart travels to somebody who's got influence and the dots connect and it is this sort of team effort. Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
Yeah. It's important.
Matt Mason:
So, are you both seeing the shift now that the trawlers aren't in there?
Eric Smith:
Yeah, quite dramatically actually. The main thing was muscle beds, because the muscle beds used to tie the bottom back together, rebuild the crust. The first year we started filming, we found a muscle bed, which covered the size of a tennis court.
Dave Erasmus:
Wow
Eric Smith:
Next year is a thousand meters across. Wow. This season, it covered from Worthing, right, right down 9 miles to Brighton. And it was on ground that we've never seen mussels on before. That was the end of last season. During last winter we had 14 named gals, so we're expected to go out there and find it's been shot blasted, but it wasn't. The mussels are still there.
Catrine Priestly:
Obviously, the mussel beds are really important because they filter the water as well. In terms of trying to get the kelp back, we need the water to be filtered…
Eric Smith:
That’ll allow more light, clear water. Same with scallops and, and all, all the filter feeders bring this clear water. Clear water and need light. Mm. More light. More light. Mm-hmm. And the kelp attached the mussels in Sussex. Yeah.
Catrine Priestly:
So Sussex is quite unique in that it's quite a shallow bay. That's why we got a lot of kelp growing there because it's quite shallow so the the, the light can get through. Mm-hmm.
Dave Erasmus:
How long do you think it would take if everything stays like it is, how long do you think it would take to get back to that Eden that you grew up in?
Eric Smith:
Well, first of all, the kelp gotta come back. We're not necessarily gonna get the same kelp back. This is why it's so important until we have to not to put stuff out there. Mm-hmm. Because you might put them on kelp back. Mm-hmm. There might be a kelp. In fact, there is one called the Japanese kelp. Which is no good for shipping or harbours but it's brilliant for wildlife. That might be the one that comes back. That's the one that comes back, then fair dues. Mm-hmm. But we don't want to interfere. Nature's gotta find its own way back, really? Mm-hmm.
Catrine Priestly:
Yeah. It's about also thinking of climate change. We need to have a kelp that comes back that's resistant to the higher temperatures in the water. Mm-hmm. You see, this is the other thing. So we want nature to lead. We're letting nature lead in Sussex so that we can see. But also it's a really good example of if, if, if there were. If these trawler bans were kind of extended around the country, which is obviously what we would love mm-hmm. Um, Sussex, would be a good example of how if you just leave it alone, if you just stop this, you know, one human pressure, then actually we could get natural recovery coming back. Mm-hmm. So we'd like it to be a sort of shining example of that really.
Dave Erasmus:
But let's say it takes 10 years to come back. There's an argument to say that the person that. Took all that stuff away, or the company that took all that stuff away is responsible for those 10 years gap, you know, to some extent. And if you had a value on that, it would change the equation quite dramatically.

Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Mason:
So I wanted to take a minute to touch on the Sussex Bay pipeline that is coming towards the end of its life as a functioning pipeline. And normally we would restore that environment to how it was before that pipe was installed. But that pipeline has become a really important part of the marine ecosystem in Sussex Bay. And so like many other marine infrastructure projects, we have to figure out how to handle the transition and handle the fact that it's now part of the environment. And so maybe Eric, you could talk a little bit about that pipeline in Sussex Bay and your experience of it.
Eric Smith:
That pipe you're talking about was put in 1976 by a company called Mackleys. It was the first plastic pipe ever used in the country. Quite a big bore. Maybe, uh, I think it's nine or 12 inches across with staples. Concrete staples hold in the bottom, whatever the years, keep it down. Every spring they're put mats across it. Mm-hmm. Like you can imagine a, a sleeping bag. Mm-hmm. Or, or a mattress full of concrete that goes down across the top to hold it down. That gets under the cup of the sea. So you'll, you, you now become a natural reef. Then taking that culture for ground penicillin, they're taking that away and putting it into the normal sewage system. They've gotta jump through a lot of hoops to do it and sell water, but that means the pipe is now gonna be stopped. You know, they, they're not gonna use it anymore. You have to put the land back to what it was before he started, so that this is got, it's got so many species of fish on that pipe, different species of fish and the ground around it where it makes a, a wedge shape in the water. The turbulents down the back, the plates are there, the mussels are there. We've even got blue, blue lit muscles there. There's so many rarities there. We cannot lose it.
Dave Erasmus:
So make sure I got this right. So a pipe comes in pretty unnatural. Yeah. Uh, and at the time somebody might have thought, oh, I don't like this. But then it's become part of the environment. Oh, exactly. And now there's life growing in and around. So slowly, almost squatters rights from the fish have taken it over and made it their own. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and so how do you feel about it now?
Catrine Priestly:
But the thing is, it, it's now, it's part of nature there now really. And, and it's actually the key we feel as divers, it's the key to Sussex Bay recovering actually now because, because all the kelps gone. Yeah. Right. And so actually, this is the place now that all of the fish, all of the creatures, kind of habitat in and protects them and it, it's like their nursery ground. So we feel it's kind of a key. The other thing is also, it was the last place that the kelp disappeared from. The trawlers couldn't go accross it. Interesting. Because the trawlers couldn't cross it. So this is a key to redoing the whole of Sussex Bay, we've got other little spots that, in one of the main keys. So what we'd really love is that, you know, we'd love to keep that in place. Um, we'd love it to be another example maybe, of being able to work together with different companies, different, you know, like the crown of state and, and SmithKline to be able to say, look, nature is coming back.

Eric Smith:
If we can keep it there, it can become a nature trail, we can boil it up in the summer. We've just built a fish habitat, three and a half ton fish habitat, which we're gonna put in rather later this year or in the spring. That will be part of it and we'll have a nature trail going out to sea, but eventually we can put cameras on that nature trail so the kids in the classrooms can log straight in.
Dave Erasmus:
I think it's a fascinating story or picture that I'm sure is replicated many, many, many times around our coastline. Where I think it is, it, it kind of shows the complex and imperfect situation we find ourselves in. Yes. Where we've done so much stuff over the generations. Yeah. And we all know that story, but what do we do now? Where, where do we go from here? And, you know, how do we redeem it?
Matt Mason:
One of the takeaways from this, this conversation for me is, is about. How nature adapts to what we do to it. And so we can't just bluntly just reverse what we did because nature has adapted.
Catrine Priestly:
Exactly.
Matt Mason:
And we have to be more nuanced in our approach to nature recovery and think about how has nature responded to what we've done over the decades and centuries, and what do we now need to do to support it, you know?
Dave Erasmus:
So as we, you know, as you both sit, looking forward now three years into the trawler ban, and you imagine the future where you want your coastline to be in 15, 20, 30 years for your grandkid. What do you want to see happen?
Catrine Priestly:
We would love to see the kelp forest come back. Um, whether that happens or not, we don't know yet, but we have got some recovery starting to happen in, in Bogner, which is Bogner Reef, which is like a rocky boulder reef where the, the trawlers couldn't trawl, but we're starting to see it sort of spread and, and get, you know, more life coming back there, which is what we'd love to see across the whole of the Bay really.
But I think what we'd really love is also is like to see, and what we are seeing is the community kind of gathering around the sea to see what's, you know, to becoming more part of the sea as well. Make sure the community love it and and are part of it. And we are seeing that a lot since COVID. You know, there's a lot more sea swimmers, there's a lot more people going out on their paddleboards.

There's all these people now that are invested in the seed. Mm-hmm. And I think that's what we would love to see as well, to see it be, you know, Sussex bay and kind of being seen as like, uh, an amazing sort of marine protected area that we can, you know, show off to the rest of the UK as, as somewhere as a shiny example of you do protect the sea and the life and, and the, the tourist industry, leisure industry that comes back with it. You know, that would be what we would love to see.
Dave Erasmus:
And is there anybody that you would love to be in conversation with? We touch most already. Yeah. I mean, the Crown estate is a big one. That's great.
Catrine Priestly:
It's great to be here. Matt sat there. That's great. Yeah. So yeah. 'cause the Crown State own the seabed, don't they?
Matt Mason:
So that's a big thing. So, um, yeah. And you were mentioning the trawler ban and the kelp forest in the Sussex Bay. We've, we've worked to some extent with the councils in, in making that happen by creating new leases for, for that area of seabed so that the councils have the control to keep the trawlers out of the bay and and to support kelp forests.
Eric Smith:
I'm really, I'm really surprised what you've been doing. I try and keep out the technical side, but there's a lot happening in the background that we don't even know about. Yeah. It's really just good.
Dave Erasmus:
So if someone's listening to this, then, not the big companies, but an individual person who lives relatively near the coast there, what's the one thing that you'd recommend they go and do right away to get connected, to get more involved, to build their relationship with the water?
Catrine Priestly:
Join our social so you can see what's going on with what we do. So its Sussex Underwater social. It also look at the Sussex Kelp Recovery Project. That's another big project. They've still got science behind what's going on as well. But I think just getting down to the beach and connecting with nature. Mm-hmm. And it's amazing, again, in the last sort of three years, I've become so much more connected since I've been doing all this with you dad, haven't I? Mm-hmm. And you walk along the tide line and you can see all these incredible things, like you see even on the beach, the life coming back. Mm-hmm. Because you've got things like the, what they used to call mermaid purses, you know, which are the mm-hmm. Um, uh, Angela Ray egg. Egg cases. You can see the sort of Dogfish cases. You can see all this cuttlefish bones. You can see that there's life out there now.
Dave Erasmus:
Well. I'm a massive fan of you guys. I'm really chuffed that you could make it up here to speak to us. That's all part of the interconnectivity, isn't it? Going out to different groups to talk with different people, make different connections, so I'm delighted you could make it up.

Thank you so much for coming into the conduit, Matt. Thank you for making time. Thanks Dave. Always insightful. We will see you next time.
Thanks for listening to Shaping Places from the Conduit and the Crown Estate. If you've enjoyed the conversation, follow the show wherever you get your podcast. For any links or resources mentioned today, check the show notes in your podcast app. I'm Dave Erasmus with Matt Mason, and we record at the conduit in London.
Until next time, take care of yourselves and look after each other.