Small pellets of plastic are washing up on the east coast of England following the fiery collision of two ships in the North Sea last week.
The crash between an oil tanker and cargo ship on 10 March initially raised concerns for local wildlife, as the US tanker, Stena Immaculate, leaked some of the jet fuel it had been carrying into the water.Portuguese-flagged cargo ship Solong was initially feared to have been transporting a hazardous chemical, adding to a toxic cocktail in the ocean, but the owner clarified this was not the case. The incident is posing a different threat to wildlife, however, according to an update from the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on 17 March.
“Yesterday (16 March) the RNLI [UK lifeboat service] advised the MCA of a sighting in waters just off the Wash of a sheen that we now know to be plastic nurdles,” says Chief Coastguard Paddy O'Callaghan. “This was confirmed by aerial surveillance flights and other assets have subsequently been deployed. Some nurdles have now also been identified on the shore.”
A retrieval operation to remove the nurdles has started today, he added. Nurdles are the tiny building blocks of the plastic industry. The small pellets of plastic - measuring between 1-5mm in size - are melted down and reformed to make the many items in our lives, from bottles to computers.
These microplastics are often shipped across the world in large containers but don’t tend to come to our attention unless something has gone seriously wrong. The largest recorded nurdle spill at sea occurred in 2021 when the X-Press pearl shipwreck saw 1,680 tonnes of nurdles spilt into the ocean and onto the shores of Sri Lanka.
In Europe, coastal communities in northern Spain faced a “white tide” of pellets last January after a ship lost six containers overboard off the coast of Portugal in December 2023. More of this article (Euro News Green) - link - more like this (nurdles) - link - more like this (Stena) - link
