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Published by Macmillan Education Ltd. © Macmillan Education Limited, 2021.
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‘No sharks but I’ve seen porpoises’: the rebirth of the River Thames
Level 2: 
Intermediate
Patrick Barkham
13 November, 2021
We begin our Thames shark hunt on a boat 
that transports commuters and tourists up and 
down the golden-brown river.
“I haven’t seen a shark but I’ve seen porpoises 
in the Thames and there were a couple of 
whales last year,” says Alfie Gardner, the 
boat’s captain. “We see a lot of seals. Almost 
every day.”
The Thames flowing through Europe’s biggest 
city is full of life, according to a new survey by 
the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Seals 
are there for a reason: the Thames is home to 
more than 115 species of fish.
Our informal shark safari via the scheduled 
riverboat service from the London Eye to North 
Greenwich starts with a display of seabirds. 
The Thames does not look inviting and its 
brown waters are coloured by sediment stirred 
up by the tides. Who knows what lies beneath?
As the riverboat cruises past the Tower 
of London, we see a cormorant. This fish-eating
bird is another sign that there is food in 
the river.
Before 1800, 3,000 Atlantic salmon were 
caught on the river each year. Then the 
Industrial Revolution poured everything from 
cyanide to sewage into the river, and the 
Victorian sewage system only shifted the 
pollution downstream to Beckton.
In 1957, a survey conducted by the Natural 
History Museum made an incredible discovery: 
there were no fish left in the Thames. As the 
Guardian reported in 1959: “The Thames is a 
badly managed open sewer.”
They started treating sewage discharged 
at Beckton in 1964. Industrial pollution was 
controlled, and heavy industry was moved from 
the riverside. In 1974, the first salmon was 
caught on the Thames –16 miles below Tower 
Bridge – since 1833. But a 32-year effort to 
restore salmon by restocking the Thames with 
young fish ended in failure in 2011.
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Recently, ZSL’s survey found that the number 
of fish species in the tidal Thames has actually 
declined since the early 1990s. “It was a 
surprising decline,” says Alison Debney, from 
ZSL’s programme for wetland ecosystem 
recovery. ‘I’ve spent the last ten years telling 
everybody we’ve got all these fish and isn’t that 
great?” Scientists need to discover the reasons 
for this decline, says Debney, which could be 
pollution combined with the climate crisis.
There are positive increases in dissolved 
oxygen concentrations and lower damaging 
phosphorus levels in the Thames but harmful 
nitrate concentrations continue to increase, and 
microplastics flow down the river at a rate of up 
to 94,000 pieces a second.
Dramatic temperature changes could also 
affect fish: on average, summer temperatures 
in the tidal Thames have risen by 0.19C a year 
this century. According to Debney, this rise 
could be assisted by that old enemy: treated 
sewage, which warms the river.
Raw sewage also continues to be discharged 
into the Thames. More than 95% of these 
overflows should be captured by the Thames 
Tideway tunnel, a £3.9bn super-sewer due for 
completion in 2025.
We don’t see a shark but river regulars say 
there are more seals than ever. They like the 
sand in front of Salt Quay pub in Rotherhithe. 
“As the river gets narrower, the seals seem to 
get bigger,” says Gardner. They are keeping 
their heads down on this particular river cruise. 
Finally, we see a shape in the water. A seal? 
No, it’s an old football.
© Guardian News and Media 2021 
First published in The Guardian, 13/11/2021
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Published by Macmillan Education Ltd. © Macmillan Education Limited, 2021.
Home >> Adults >> General English >> NEWS LESSONS
•PHOT
OCOPIABLE•
CAN BE DOWNLOADED
FROM WEBSITE