Jim: And what about yourself? You were out on the river earlier in a Canoe? Was that a Canadian Canoe?
Aldo: Yeah, that’s right. I first started canoeing when I was a kid. So a Canadian canoe has an open top and they are built for expeditions. Loading up with wood, with all your camp gear, your tents and just heading off and having an adventure. More often than not, I've paddled on my own, so you sit at the back of the canoe and that allows you to direction-find, to steer and to keep all your kit up front. I think it’s one of the best vehicles for exploring the waterways of the world. If you look at the UK, we are an island nation, we are absolutely riddled with rivers, canals, waterways, lochs, lakes and to be able to travel on those waterways, those arteries, just opens so much more of the country for adventure.
Jim: So is Canoeing quite freeing for you? Being out on the river?
Aldo: Definitely! I've travelled all over the world and done lots of cool things in different places but when I put the boat in this morning and started paddling down the river I was just taken back to when I was young, in the Scouts and exploring round about my local neighbourhood in Scotland. It just took me straight back to that time of being in the river, with no one else there. It's so quiet and you're just drifting with the flow. You can hear the birds, you can see the kites flying overhead and it's just really magical. And it's only an hour from my house in Bristol!
When I'm on a river journey I love it, because every single day is different, and every single second is different. You're passing a different part of that river. There is the old cliché that life is like a river, it's flowing and it's moving in one direction, but I think for me when I'm on a river I'm connected and I'm grounded to that area, to that country, to that environment and it does remind you that all things flow to the sea.
Aldo: I spotted something on the bank further down there… is it flint?
Jim: It's chalk. We're in a chalk stream here on the River Kennet and chalk streams are very precious, very unique to the UK. About 90% of the world's chalk streams are in the UK and about 80% of those are in the south of England.
Aldo: What's so unique about a chalk stream? Is it the substrate the bottom?
Jim: That's exactly right. They have what's called a chalk aquifer so all the water that gathers is filtered down into the aquifer and then it's pushed back up decades later through springs, filtered. What that means is it offers such a rare and rich ecosystem and it’s normally in very good health if it's looked after.
Aldo: They’re spring-fed as opposed to runoff from mountains.
Jim: That's right. They're not spate rivers but the problem we have with chalk streams is they're very rare. They’re nicknamed English rainforests for that reason because they're so rich.
Aldo: So biodiverse.
Jim: So biodiverse! The ecosystem that they support is so rich in life but like all rivers in the UK, they're suffering from pollution and abuse, albeit from water companies, who as we know, have been criminally destroying our rivers for decades, but also agriculture. Unlike water companies, farmers don't intentionally want to damage the rivers but they're not incentivised by the government in any way to prioritise rivers, and much of the environment, so that needs to change.
Aldo: So, you're talking, sewage, raw sewage, and I guess that the runoff from fields?
Jim: That's right. Runoff from fields, whether it be chemical runoff from fertilisers. You've got the problem with the poultry farming up on the Wye with all the phosphates and nutrients. Or you've got the runoff of the topsoil and the runoff of the silt and the sediment which gets into these rivers and just smothers all life on the riverbed.
Aldo: So, I've seen the algae blooms before which come from nitrates from farming, and they get flushed out into the sea, but are there the same problems in rivers?
Jim: Absolutely. Algae blooms are caused by too much heat, lack of oxygen in the water and also from too many phosphates and nutrients coming into the river. It causes algae to bloom and smothers all the goodness.
Aldo: Would you say that the UK rivers are in dire straits?
Jim: I would, sadly. But I always like to look on the bright side of these things. It’s not irredeemable, but we need to be acting now.
Aldo: What are the action points then? What can we do?
Jim: Well, I think traditionally you would have liked to think that your representatives, your government representatives, your local MPs could, on behalf of you, take these big issues to Parliament and get laws changed but sadly as we know, when it comes to the environment and certainly when it comes to rivers, they are incredibly ineffectual and almost apathetic and indifferent. But what's great about social media and the fact that we're all much more closely connected is that if we all collectively use our voices, report abuse when we see it on the river, talk to each other, court the media as and when there's a proper story to tell. All of this makes a massive difference and we need to be holding these water companies to account.
Aldo: So, it's very difficult to actually manage and to protect?
Jim: The government can't manage it because they don't have the resource or the inclination, but we can. We anglers, canoeists, swimmers, dog walkers and anyone who is connected to the river (that's all of us in my book) can make a difference and what we can do is report it when we see sewage being illegally dumped into rivers. If we have a collective voice we can really make a difference and it's starting to. They call it citizen science and it's working. It's making a big difference. It’s a shame because we shouldn't be having to do it. We should be getting on with our lives. We pay our taxes, we want to trust our government to look after our rivers, but they don't, so we're having to do it instead.
Aldo: Does that have a knock-on effect to the fish, for example we're fishing grayling here, with salmon, with trout, with other fish. Does that have a knock-on effect?
Jim: Massive, sadly. For instance, there's another chalk stream close to this one called the River Test which is arguably a world-famous trout river, it's where fly-fishing came from and they have a small but vital salmon stock. It's a chalk stream salmon species and what happens is every time, in the Test’s case it's southern water. They dump illegal sewage in the headwaters. This time of year the salmon are spawning and that sewage just kills all the spawning eggs and that's an endangered species now so it has a massive knock-on effect to the wild fish. 0% of rivers across the UK and Northern Ireland are considered to be in good health right now.
Aldo: So not even 1%? Effectively what that’s saying is that all rivers are in trouble, or they're polluted?
Jim: Yeah, and that's a big statistic, that's huge.
Aldo: I grew up in Scotland. I wonder if they are involved. I guess they would be, if it's the same in England?
Jim: I spent a lot of time up in Scotland salmon fishing and I'm an ambassador for the Atlantic Salmon Trust. They're not in as bad health but they're still not in great health and the salmon stock are in huge decline partly because of man-made obstacles which could be hydro’s or historic dams and weirs that don't cater for running fish. There is pollution going on in Scotland but not to the same effect as in the UK, because there are less people, crudely speaking.
Aldo: Less industry up there?
Jim: There's less industry but there's aquaculture up there. You don't want to get me started on that, that's fish farms off the coast.
Aldo: I've noticed a lot more of them when I'm back home. There's a lot of them off the coast but it seems like that's a hotly debated topic up there.
Jim: Exactly, it's contentious isn't it and nobody wants to take work away from people, but we argue that you can still have aquaculture, you can still farm salmon because there's a need for it, that's undeniable. There's demand for cheap protein but just do it in pens on land. Take the pens out of the sea because all the pollution, the dead fish, all the chemicals they put in, all the sewage, all the sh*t that these fish produce, kills the seabed beneath but that's only one of many problems.
