Nurturing an invasion

• Volunteers on Kovalam’s Grove Beach collect and sift small plastic pellets, or nurdles, from the sand after the sinking of the Liberia-flagged container ship MSC Elsa 3 off Kochi.

• The pellets, each 2 mm to 3 mm in size, invade every nook and cranny on the coast.

• Over the past five days, volunteers have collected and packed two container loads of nurdles, spending close to seven hours a day on the backbreaking work.

• The volunteers are hired by the Gujarat-based Marine Emergency Response Centre (MERC) to salvage cargo from the ship’s owners Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).

• The cleanup drive attracts curious stares from visitors at nearby Hawa Beach (Eve’s Beach).

• The nurdles, pale white and near-invisible, get dispersed away from the coast, making them an invisible and dangerous pollutant once they enter the ocean.

• Unsuspecting visitors could carry the nurdles underfoot along with the mud and sand on their shoes.

• There have been complaints of unbroken bags of pellets being found in the lower reaches of the Neyyar river, possibly reaching there through the estuary with the tides.

Kerala Shipwreck and Plastic Nurdle Spill

• The Kerala coast has seen 61 containers recovered from a shipwreck, worsening the problems of the district’s fisher community during the southwest monsoon season.

• The fisher community has been battling coastal erosion and loss of work due to inclement weather.

• The fear of dangerous cargo from the ship mixing with seawater has affected fish sales.

• Debris from the ship, including the pellets, has washed ashore in multiple locations along the coast.

• The Marine Monitoring Lab at the University of Kerala described the incident as the first major plastic nurdle landings in India caused by a shipwreck.

• The nurdles, pre-production plastics made from materials like polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride, pose a danger to marine organisms, including fish, as they can cause intestinal blockages and break up into smaller fragments, entering food chains and human diets.

• The continuous replenishment along shorelines presents an ongoing environmental concern.

• The removal of the nurdles is expected to be a long-term process, potentially taking up to five years.

• The plastic pellets function as toxic sponges adsorbing hazardous substances, posing long-term and multidimensional impacts.

• The real picture of the nurdle spill will only emerge when the rain subsides and the weather settles.