Just past a scrum of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing through the sand on hands and knees. Their task is to try to remove millions of peppercorn-sized black plastic biobeads from where they have settled in the sand. Beyond them, a seal carcass grins menacingly, teeth protruding from its rotting skull.<\/p>\n
Last week, an environmental disaster took place on Camber Sands beach, on what could turn out to be an unprecedented scale. Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works, owned by Southern Water, experienced a mechanical failure and spewed out millions of biobeads<\/a> on to the Sussex coastline. Southern Water has since taken responsibility<\/a> for the spill. Ironically, biobeads are used to clean wastewater \u2013 bacteria attach to their rough, crinkly surface and clean the water of contaminants.<\/p>\n In the days since, volunteers have flocked to the beach. On a chilly November morning, beneath a blue sky, they painstakingly pick out the minuscule beads by hand. It is mind-numbingly tedious work.<\/p>\n Others \u2013 much to the envy of the hand-pickers \u2013 have sieves. One volunteer has fashioned a sieve from a mesh onion sack found nearby.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re scooping up the sand, then pouring the sand over a bucket into a sieve, and then pouring the water on top, so that we just get the beads,\u201d says Hastings resident Roisin O\u2019Gorman.<\/p>\n Andy Dinsdale, the founder of Strandliners, an environmental organisation that runs beach cleanups, says: \u201cThey\u2019ve got to get down on their hands and knees, almost into the strandline [the line of seaweed and other debris that lines the high water mark on beaches], to look for very small 5mm black pellets. We can only do our best.\u201d<\/p>\n Kneeling on the sand, on your knees, just picking them out, one by one, is futileNick, volunteer<\/p>\n He is noticeably exhausted from his days-long effort coordinating the cleanup. He has missed his son\u2019s birthday celebrations, he says, to be here.<\/p>\n Despite their valiant efforts, many volunteers feel helpless. Walking tramples the plastic further into the sand and overfilled bin bags of waste can split, putting workers back to square one. \u201cKneeling on the sand, on your knees, just picking them out, one by one, is futile,\u201d says Nick, a volunteer from Tunbridge Wells, in frustration.<\/p>\n To make more of a dent, experts have brought in a special machine. \u201cDo you remember Teletubbies?\u201d says Dinsdale. He points about a mile down the beach, towards what looks like a giant vacuum cleaner \u2013 remarkably reminiscent of the character Noo-Noo<\/a> from the children\u2019s television series \u2013 sucking up a carpet of black beads.<\/p>\n This microplastic removal machine is the invention of Joshua Beech, an environmental scientist and founder of the cleanup organisation Nurdle. \u201cIt works by vacuuming up material, separating it by density, and then sieving and separating in the back [of the machine] so it comes out as nearly pure plastic in the collection trays,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Beech and his colleague Roy Beal have spent five backbreaking days vacuuming the beach from sunrise to sunset. Beech hoists the heavy nozzle on to his shoulders while Beal holds it underarm. \u201cHe has a rugby player\u2019s shoulders,\u201d says Beal. \u201cI have kayaker\u2019s shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n They hope that removing as many biobeads as possible can prevent more damage.<\/p>\n Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter, says microplastics \u201coverlap with the prey item size of many marine organisms and can enter the food web, with the potential to transfer contaminants into cells and tissues\u201d.<\/p>\n They can also break down and leach harmful compounds that affect animals\u2019 hormones and cause reproductive problems. Local people are already concerned by an unusual number of stranded animals \u2013 three seals and a porpoise \u2013 that recently washed up on the beach. At this stage, the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP), which investigates strandings, doesn\u2019t think these deaths are linked to the spill.<\/p>\n Rye Harbour nature reserve, adjacent to Camber Sands, is Sussex Wildlife Trust\u2019s largest reserve. This special area is \u201ca matrix of wetland habitat\u201d, influenced by and linked to the sea, says site manager Paul Tinsley-Marshall. \u201cThe vegetated shingle is a globally threatened habitat.\u201d It is home to more than 4,355 species, including common, sandwich and little terns, oystercatchers, plovers and avocets. Biobead pollution has now been confirmed at Rye Harbour, and the reserve\u2019s team is currently assessing the damage and carefully planning their cleanup of this sensitive habitat.<\/p>\n According to Strandliners, there have been two previous large-scale biobead incidents reported to the Environment Agency, in 2010 and 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the worst microplastic spill we\u2019ve seen this year,\u201d says Beech. Worse even than the spill of nurdles (pre-production plastic pellets)<\/a> in March, when two ships collided<\/a> in the North Sea. The plastic beads washed up on Norfolk beaches and the surrounding coastline.<\/p>\n The harm caused by the biobeads at Camber may depend on their composition. Beads like these used to be recycled from potentially toxic e-waste until regulatory legislation in 2006. No one knows when these beads were made, Dinsdale says.<\/p>\n With the sun due to set at 4.20pm, time on the beach is limited. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting against the sunlight,\u201d says volunteer Cate Lamb who has travelled from London with her partner, Khalid Flynn, and eight-year-old Maya Flynn. \u201cWe feel like we\u2019re fighting a losing battle, a little, because of the scale of the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n At that moment, her bucket splits.<\/p>\n Rother district council says attempts to remove all the pellets have \u201cproven impossible\u201d and that they \u201cexpect further large amounts to be deposited in the coming weeks and months\u201d.<\/p>\n Beech and the Nurdle team hope to return after the next spring tide brings in more, but this is dependent on them being able to cover the costs of a second clean.<\/p>\n The money they make selling recycled sheeting made from the beach plastics to fund future cleanups isn\u2019t enough. \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to come back,\u201d says Beech. \u201cBut the environment needs us back.\u201d<\/p>\n Southern Water has apologised for the spill but Helena Dollimore, the MP for Hastings and Rye, wants it to go further by funding the cleanup and any future nature restoration. She is also calling for an independent investigation. \u201cSouthern Water cannot be trusted to mark their own homework,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just past a scrum of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing through the sand on hands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-137884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}