Paul Murphy The Politics Show BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

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Paul Murphy brandishes a supermarket pack of mussels

If you have bought a pack of mussels from a supermarket recently the chances are they've come from the Wash, but we are not the only ones who enjoy them.

The fishermen at ports Like Boston in Lincolnshire say the average eider duck can pack away about 2kg of mussels every day.

That is about four large supermarket packs each. And now a burgeoning population of mussel loving ducks is placing an entire industry under threat.

April marks the end of the year's mussel harvest on the vast waters of the Wash estuary.

It has been a dreadful season and there are many who fear it is the last one they will work.

In a classic conflict between the environment and industry, fishermen in the ports around the Wash say they can only watch as thousands of Eider Duck gobble up one of the mainstays of the local economy.

The duck is allowed to feed unchallenged because of the protected status of the Wash - it is a site of special scientific interest run by the government agency English Nature.

Eider ducks dive in the shallow waters and gobble up the mussels

It is only in recent years that the mussel beds have caught the eye of the eider.

That is because fishermen have improved catches by buying in mussel larvae and "planting" them in sites on the shallow sea bed known as "lays".

"The mussel fishermen are now growing perfect mussels for eider", Richard Leaf of English Nature tells the Politics Show for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

"They are increasingly concentrating in numbers and feeding on this wonderful food source which is a very juicy meaty mussel with a very thin shell perfect for eider just underneath the water in the way they like to dive down"

Henry Bellingham says fishermen just want to protect their crop

English Nature is trialling the effectiveness of floating eider duck scarers. It has placed three of them over the muscle beds.

The shell fishermen want many more of them but English nature says they are too disruptive to the bird population.

"What the fishermen want is a licence to cull a few of them and to scare them away", says local MP Henry Bellingham.

"Just as any farmer would ask for permission to protect his crops, it's as simple as that.

"My concern is that English nature doesn't understand what's going on in the Wash".

A public inquiry into the shell fishermen's concerns was meant to start at the end of April 2006 but has now been delayed.

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