Since October 2021, England’s North East coasts have been plagued by mass mortalities of crustaceans. The local fishing livelihood has been challenged by a shrinking catch, while wildlife volunteers have found malnourished seals in and around Teesside. In 2022, fishers, wildlife volunteers and academics initiated an investigation which concluded that the cause was likely pyridine - an industrial by-product present in the bed of the River Tees, which could be stirred up by dredging. This resulted in tension between the local government and civic groups because a call for a suspension of dredging would impact Teesworks, a freeport development in the area, as capital dredging is crucial in its construction phase.

Responding to this, the project imagines how fishers, residents, scientists, and volunteers could come together to take ownership of their living environment. It proposes a network of indicator landscapes to serve as sites of citizen science by making use of plant species that can tolerate high levels of toxins to act as pollution indicators. The long-term vision of the proposed indicator landscapes is for them to become sites that promote grassroot environmental protection.