Nurdles at Newark

The sun shone this weekend on a visit to Newark in Deerness. The warmth had caused a swarm of flies to appear. These in turn had encouraged flocks of startlings to converge into a murmur as they pursued the flies along the beach. Small groups of turnstones joined in. Briefly, it felt like Spring!

A closer look at the strand line where the turnstones were feeding revealed a disturbing amount of plastic confetti and nurdles. In the first area I looked, a patch of sand about the size of my own hand was covered with fragments of plastic and nurdles - the pre-production pellets that look exactly like fish eggs. If I could find so much so quickly and in such a small area then there must be uncountable numbers.
What exactly were the birds eating....?

Plastic confetti + nurdles + sea water = plastic soup

Not very far away there were some balloons which had obviously travelled a fair distance. I think the nearest Pizza Hut is in Inverness over a hundred miles away - of course they needn't necessarily have come from the nearest Pizza Hut.

potential turtle food?

Latex balloons are particularly favoured by turtles. Though the latex is biodegradeable it takes so long for it to decompose that it can do a great deal of damage through ingestion, and the ribbon is an entanglement hazard.

 



The fine weather encouraged a lot of folk on to the beaches this weekend and it was brilliant to see other people picking up plenty of pieces!