nurdles

Nothing cheers me up more these days than a story about plastic nurdles, raising the awareness of these seemingly inocuous plastic beads. These pre-production plastic pellets are shipped in containers across the oceans to be made into various plastic products for consumers. They can end up in the ocean if a container falls off a ship, and in days past, they were used to help skid the big metal containers into place; this practice is now banned. If you don't believe containers fall off ships, you'll be dumbfounded to learn that as many as 10,000 fall into the ocean every year, lost overboard, never to be picked up.

Nurdles are floating throughout the world's oceans and end up on beaches and shorelines. Last fall, I found them on Yellow Island (photo above), a small island in the San Juan Archipelago, WA. Nurdles look like flying fish eggs so are consumed by surface feeding birds, mammals and fish. Nurdles have been found in the stomach of albatross, shearwaters, turtles and even myctophids, deep sea fishes that come to the surface at night.

The near ubiquitous distribution of plastics in the ocean has been catalogued by scientists and environmentalists. Here in this link to Patagonia's website, 5 Gyres Institute scientists are documenting plastics in the South Atlantic gyre and beaches of Hawaii. And of course, they find nurdles! Check out their pictures.

http://video.patagonia.com/slideshow/Journey-to-the-South-Atlantic-G?sssdmh=dm23.140437&src=082211_ci3