Exclusive: New data reveals how sea mud is far more important than we think

Mud, mud…. Yes glorious and all. But that now appears true in science – not just in song.

Snettisham, Norfolk where you gaze upon mudflats literally as far as the human eye can see and beyond. The desert-like wet wasteland of The Wash.

Now though new research suggests there is vast value in humble old mudflats – and I don’t mean King John’s Crown Jewels still lost, still out there somewhere in The Wash.

I mean blue carbon. The effect of gazillions of particles of plants and dead animals breaking down into our rich and vast mudflats.

Standing gazing on The Wash’s brown vastness with me, scientist Tom Brook who’s come all the way from Oban in the Highlands to record an interview. He is one of the key researchers of this project:

“I wanna make noise about mud – politicise mud,” he smiles, his Seattle accent now lilting a wee bit with west coast Scots.

He’s given Channel 4 News an exclusive preview of research carried out over two and half years, showing that humble sea mud stores carbon much more effectively than even our forests do.

Nobody knew.

The research from the Blue Carbon Mapping Project by the Scottish Association of Marine Science working on behalf of the WWF, Wildlife Trusts and RSPB reveals 244 million tonnes of organic carbonate are stored in just the top ten centimetres of our seabed mud.

The UK seabed could annually capture almost three times the carbon soaked up by UK forests. It is a staggering peer-reviewed data breakthrough.

Tom Brook, blue carbon specialist from WWF, says: “244 million tonnes of carbon. To put that in perspective look at how much is added each year and it is 13 million tonnes. That is in the range of two to three times more than forests.”

It’s pioneer research in a country – a world – chattering and angsting endlessly over forests from the Amazon to the Russian Taiga – yet ignoring mud.

Now this frontier science from the genteel surroundings of Oban is changing all that. So, bring on the noise they say – for mud.

Here’s Ceri Lewis of Exeter University:

“It’s the dominant marine habitat around these isles but it’s been largely ignored. We know it is teeming with animal life but now carbon too. We don’t ignore our forests. We should not ignore our mud.”

She adds:

“It’s very hard to find any undisturbed mud around the UK or globally. And that is because we are not protecting it in the way we might protect other marine environments.”

The disturbance comes largely from trawling and scallop dredging as well as commercial dredging. Often this is still permitted in so-called Marine Protected Areas. Scientists now want that changed, and to achieve that means politicising mud.

Britain is blessed with way more than its share of mudflats. Not just around the south of England but all around our 5,000 or so British Isles (yes – that many). Now mapped from shore to deep undersea for the very first time by this research.

Perhaps scientists wanting to make a noise about mud are pushing at an open door with a government elected by landslide on a distinctly green ticket and with this year’s COP global climate fast approaching,  they want the government to listen and act.

To make our MPAs – Marine Protection Areas – actually live up to their name: proper seabed protection from threats like dredging, trawling and scallop dredging for example.

As the sun begins to sink along the shell-studded beach of the muddy Wash, birdwatchers are assembling. The word is out. By dusk perhaps 40,000 Knots will be circling and wheeling to roost the night on these gigantic mudflats, safe from predators.

Such numbers are supported of course by the richness of that mud again – its worms and invertebrates one giant bird feeder for them during the day.

We have known forever of course about the richness for birds the larder mud provides, but now though this homegrown science is alerting us and the world to the richness of this vast, smooth, silty, slimy, carbon store.

Like I say – it ain’t just King John’s Crown Jewels locked in there for centuries, wider richness abounds.