Cycling for sturgeon (Interview with Matt Spencer)
By Eleanor Grice
© Matt Spencer
Matt Spencer hatched a plan in lockdown…
…to leave his job as the UK Fisheries Outreach Officer at the Marine Stewardship Council and cycle 11,000km across Europe and Central Asia. Why? To raise vital awareness of sturgeon declines.
Critical in maintaining ecosystem structures and central to many of the cultures along the rivers they inhabit, sturgeon numbers have plummeted in the last century due to a combination of river pollution, loss of habitat and poaching.
MATT: They’re the most endangered group of species on the planet, we have just 26 species left and they’re all threatened, Endangered or Critically Endangered.
The last time we checked in with Matt, he was still on the road. So now that the adventure is over, how is he feeling? Certainly glad to be reunited with his home comforts, though it seems there has been an adjustment period.
MATT: When I first came to the UK I had to sleep on the floor because the bed was just too soft for me, I was waking up in the night with my joints aching.
SHOAL: Oh my god.
MATT: I’ve slowly worked my way up to the bed.
Matt arrived back in the UK in October – “but I do miss it”.
MATT: The best part was I’d unzip the tent in the morning and get a cool breeze of uncertainty. I didn’t know what would be happening, who I’d be meeting, what I’d be seeing.
© Matt Spencer
The vast journey from London to Central Asia…
…via extreme terrain from deserts to mountain passes, was conceived during the pandemic. Like everybody else, Matt was stuck at home and grew extremely familiar with his surroundings. His “tiny London flat” had a world map on the wall, that across the weeks he began to obsess over.
MATT: I’ve always had a fascination with sturgeon and I could just track the rivers where they were still present. The Garonne, the Po, the Danube. I then started looking at what’s in between the rivers. I was like well I’ve got to cross the channel, then there’s the Alps, then you’ve got the Black Sea. It was quite cool no-one had ever done this before. There’s always that weird tinge of pride when you’re first to do something.
SHOAL: Were you nervous?
MATT: It’s only when you tell work you’re leaving that you’re at a point of no return. I wasn’t nervous about quitting; I was actually excited to tell them the news because I knew in my heart of hearts this was shattering the glass. The only time I was really nervous about the trip was the day before I left because I hadn’t done a lot of training. Everyone at my leaving drinks was like Matt we didn’t know you liked cycling you’ve never spoken about it before. When I told them I didn’t they went from laughter to [being] quite concerned. It kicked in that I was leaving behind my life and everything that I knew. It was a thrill.
© Matt Spencer
With a background…
…in the Marine Stewardship Council, Matt has engaged with a lot of fish species but for him the sturgeon is special. Before this recent adventure, Matt joined a project in Georgia with Fauna and Flora International looking at ways to restore populations of sturgeon in the Rioni River. Six species of sturgeon used to breed there, but due to poaching, environmental degradation, and dams those numbers have fallen significantly. It was on that project Matt had the “moment when I realised what I want to do for the rest of my life”.
As he excitedly talks about how his latest journey gave him the chance to see the different communities and how they approached conservation of the fish, it’s clear Matt’s passion for sturgeon is burning as brightly as ever.
MATT: I have a tattoo now.
SHOAL: Wow – was it planned or spontaneous?
MATT: It was something I wanted to do. I got it on my last day in Tashkent. No regrets. They did a fantastic job, it’s on my leg.
SHOAL: A sensible move to get a leg tattoo on the final day and not half way through, when you’re cycling.
MATT: Yeah exactly.
© Matt Spencer
© Matt Spencer
Emailing Matt ahead of our conversation…
…he mentioned a phrase that stuck with us – “the madness that inspired and transpired”.
MATT: Well, the madness that inspired. Everyone who I told about my plan to cycle halfway across the world for fish was just like, that is complete lunacy. Fair enough. And all the madness that transpired. Drinking with policemen until the early hours. Hearing people walk past my tent at 2am in a forest in Romania. A lot of near-misses: drivers, dogs, landslides…
SHOAL: Speaking of – I imagine there were bumps in the road, literal or otherwise. What unexpected moments did you navigate?
MATT: Bad moments are a bit like thunderstorms. They’re normally fleeting but pretty grim. I had a week from hell in Hungary. It was about two months into the trip and loads of my gear started failing on me, plus basically six days and nights of rain. That was tough. I got dysentery in Uzbekistan, but I was meeting a Russian sturgeon scientist so I had to keep going. If I missed him it would be a complete mess. It led to some quite funny moments though, where I had to make an emergency pitstop at the side of the road and people in minivans were just driving past. Gives you all you need to know about that moment in my life.
SHOAL: It’s one of those things though that a month from now, a year from now, ten years from now will just be an interesting thing about Matt.
MATT: Yeah, about four days later I was laughing. At the time I was like “God my life absolutely sucks right now,” but then when you’re on the recovery stretch you can laugh at the misfortune.
© Matt Spencer
The incredible journey spanned not just countries, but continents…
…with Matt’s cycle route based on specific rivers known for their sturgeon populations. From the Garonne in France across the Alps, then following the River Po across Italy. Matt then followed the Danube for several hundred miles before crossing the Black Sea and arriving in the Rioni basin. Next he traversed Georgia and Armenia before having to fly to Aktau on the coast of Kazakhstan, as Azerbaijan was still sealed due to covid. From here it took nine days crossing a desert into Uzbekistan and a jaunt over the Fann mountians in Tajikistan before finally arriving in the Syr Darya in the Fergana Valley.
MATT: Armenia was amazing. To do Georgia and then Armenia it was like gold followed by platinum. I spent a lot of time in southern Georgia near a place called Vardzia. To get there I had to cross the Zekari pass which separated lush verdant mountains on one side into arid Steppe conditions within two hours of cycling. There was barely anyone around, a really ancient part of the world. That was a real highlight.
SHOAL: I’ve been to Georgia and I am personally obsessed with the food there.
MATT: Yes! I had one guy tell me “don’t go to Georgia the cuisine is awful” and I was like…khinkali? Are you mad!
SHOAL: That’s a crazy thing to say, I mean khatchapuri? I’m addicted.
MATT: Romania’s epic, it’s so wild. People think for wilderness you have to go to Alaska or Patagonia, there are parts of Romania which are genuinely still wild. We went down through Uzbekistan, through Tajikistan and then up back into the Fergana Valley. That was mind-blowing. There were so many good spots. The food was wicked.
SHOAL: Were you picking up local recommendations or did you go in with plans for what you would do and eat?
MATT: A little bit of both. France and Italy I’d been to before and I had friends who are French and Italian so I just asked them (a) do you have any family I can stay with for free and (b) any recommendations? In France a slight detour I made was for the Tarne Gorge. It’s some of the best cycling I did the whole trip. Stunning. The weather was awful which meant everyone else was off the road. Just me and some other guy barrelling through headwinds and rain for three days.
SHOAL: It’s nice to have the freedom to be able to incorporate that into the trip.
MATT: Yeah, and credit where credit’s due – Google Maps is incredible. As soon as I’d outlined the route I’d look for the rough country roads. The idea was to double the distance and half the traffic, rather than double the traffic and half the distance. You plan a rough route, but other than that you just follow your nose. Sometimes I just get a really good feeling about a path and I’ve got six months to do it, so I’ve got a bit of time to play with. There would be times when I wouldn’t look at my phone, wouldn’t look at a map, I’d just follow this path. So that was fun.
© Matt Spencer
The final big stop of the trip…
…(before any spontaneous tattoos were booked!) was to the Syr Darya to look for the shovelnose sturgeon, one of SHOAL’s 10 Lost Fishes. Matt met up with Russia and Central Asia sturgeon expert Alexey Cherniak. The duo set out to search the Fergana Valley, the area where the last recordings of the shovelnose sturgeon were taken.
MATT: It was wicked to go into these really remote, rural communities. We’d sit down, sometimes over food, sometimes informal chats by the road or by the river. The older generation fishermen said they hadn’t seen it for 60 years. Anyone under the age of 60 hadn’t even heard of it. So we can probably put a line through that area in terms of hosting the sturgeon.
Disappointed by the outcome of the search, Alexey and Matt are already talking about going further upstream into Kyrgyzstan as the next port of call. Fishermen in the area have anecdotally reported catching the sturgeon in the past 20 or 30 years.
MATT: I built up in my head that I was going to see it, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but when you’re cycling by yourself you don’t have much else to think about. You do feel a bit like you’ve let everyone down, but at the same time you sit back and realise the chances were vanishingly small.
SHOAL: Especially at the end of a trip like that, you must start to feel like this is the Hollywood final act moment.
MATT: There were so many close scrapes and near shaves that you think, no matter how vanishingly small the chance of finding a shovel nose we’ve been so lucky over the past few months you might get one final roll of the dice. But it wasn’t to be.
© Matt Spencer
So the big question is…
…what’s next?
MATT: I guess for any future employers reading, my answer is no massive trips planned. I’ve definitely got the bug for central Asia, I’d love to go back there. Unfortunately reality is knocking so it’s feet under the table time. And then maybe disappear again.
SHOAL: Work until you have the resources to travel again. And repeat.
MATT: Exactly, life is there for the living right? It’s a great mentality to live with. And it doesn’t need to be for a higher cause, but in moments where I was properly down, knowing that I was cycling for a cause was a massive preserver of energy for me.
SHOAL: With that in mind, for anyone who comes across your journey – what can they do?
MATT: Unfortunately the donation link is now closed. However the cause is Fauna and Flora International so if you want to donate money please donate it to them or SHOAL, another group close to my heart.
Obviously it’s a tough time for everyone financially. If you can’t donate then try and volunteer, if you can’t volunteer then just take 10 minutes a day to walk around and appreciate how majestic wildlife can be. You don’t need to disappear to Alaska or whatever to do that. Just go to your garden, or to a local park.
Be in wonder of something as simple as a bee or a spider and think of ways you can help them out. Small things like that do make massive differences.
SHOAL: Absolutely. Thanks so much for chatting with us Matt. What an incredible journey.
MATT: Best thing I ever did, riskiest thing I’ve ever done – but it paid me back far more than it cost me.
© Matt Spencer
To follow Matt’s future adventures…
…make sure to follow him on social media, and check out his blog One Average Spoke to dive further into his incredible trip.
MATT: Lastly, I absolutely have to finish with a huge thanks to the official supporters of the expedition, without whom this pipedream would never have turned into reality. A special shout out to the Fishmongers’ Company’s Charitable Trust who really threw their own passions into this trip, the Alpkit Foundation, the Jeremy Willson Charitable Trust and New England Seafood International. I owe a great deal to all of them
