More bad news on nurdles at Charmouth
Over Easter 2023 Charmouth Beach was again inundated with plastic nurdles. Dana Assinder reported:
"there are nurdles floating on the lowish tide line in the river and as you reach the river mouth they are caught up in the wrack and in small drifts extending along the beach. Inevitably they are being trodden in to the sand.
It’s impossible to know where they came from, or if there are more to come, but they are clearly a fresh spill; grey white and black, clean and not seaworn or ridged, so I’m confident they are not biobeads / sewage related.
The photo of the bowl and yoghurt pot (500ml) is to show how many nurdles are in the surface layer of sand I scooped from an area about 20cm square just beyond the river mouth."
"there are nurdles floating on the lowish tide line in the river and as you reach the river mouth they are caught up in the wrack and in small drifts extending along the beach. Inevitably they are being trodden in to the sand.
It’s impossible to know where they came from, or if there are more to come, but they are clearly a fresh spill; grey white and black, clean and not seaworn or ridged, so I’m confident they are not biobeads / sewage related.
The photo of the bowl and yoghurt pot (500ml) is to show how many nurdles are in the surface layer of sand I scooped from an area about 20cm square just beyond the river mouth."
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Biobeads and Nurdles in June 2022
Image: Dana Assinder
Here are some photos of the nurdles and biobeads that Dana collected on 29th June 2022.
She took three 500mm scoops from a random square metre, from surface to a depth of 10cm. Location just below the beach bridge, behind the gabion baskets that support the east end of the footbridge.
There’s a range of colours and textures, but plenty of biobeads evident - mainly black and blue with ridges.
They show up at various stages of attrition. (Dana thinks she might well have missed some of the smaller black ones as they are well camouflaged)
Dana reports how little general plastic waste there is in each scoop in comparison. The regular beach cleans and local daily litter picks really help with the bigger stuff that gets washed in or down.
She took three 500mm scoops from a random square metre, from surface to a depth of 10cm. Location just below the beach bridge, behind the gabion baskets that support the east end of the footbridge.
There’s a range of colours and textures, but plenty of biobeads evident - mainly black and blue with ridges.
They show up at various stages of attrition. (Dana thinks she might well have missed some of the smaller black ones as they are well camouflaged)
Dana reports how little general plastic waste there is in each scoop in comparison. The regular beach cleans and local daily litter picks really help with the bigger stuff that gets washed in or down.
three scoops
sample 3
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sample 1
sample 2
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