— By Plasteurope.com correspondent — 

Wildlife organisations based on the east coast of England have reported clumps of plastic pellets, known as nurdles, washing up on local beaches after last week’s collision between an oil tanker, the Stena Immaculate, and a cargo vessel, the Solong, on the North Sea off the coast of East Yorkshire.

The collision, which took place on 10 March, resulted in a major fire on the Solong, the loss of one of the vessel’s crew, and the release of multiple litres of jet fuel and other material including the plastic pellets into the North Sea.

According to the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and Norfolk Wildlife Trust, there are four patches of nurdles that have been mapped and recorded in surveys. “While [these] patches have been relatively small, they still present a concern for nature,” the trusts said in a joint statement.

“The relevant authorities have now deployed vessels to try to net pollutants from the sea, and co-ordinated actions are underway to collect any that come ashore,” they added.

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Kevin Hart, director of nature conservation at Norfolk Wildlife Trust, said the washed up plastic material could present a danger to wildlife. “If seabirds eat nurdles, they can die from choking or starvation.” The plastic may also work its way up the food chain to larger marine mammals that feed on fish or smaller animals which have eaten the material, he added.

Hart said the risks increased when other pollutants, such as oil, got stuck to them, and he appealed to members of the public to report any sightings of nurdles, “but to avoid touching them as they may have toxic pollutants stuck to them.”

While collisions like that between the Stena Immaculate and the Solong are relatively rare, the amount of plastics which finds its way into the world’s oceans, seas, and rivers remains a massive environmental problem.

According to environmental pressure group Surfers Against Sewage (St Agnes, UK; www.sas.org.uk), based on the northern coast of Cornwall, 12 mn t of plastics is dumped in the sea every year, while it makes up 80% of all studied marine pollution.