Millions of Plastic Pellets Wash Up on Beaches in Spain

The sandy beaches of Spain’s northwestern Galicia region have been inundated with millions of plastic pellets, sometimes referred to as “nurdles” or “mermaid tears,” reported Reuters.

The pellets ended up in the sea when a container fell off the Liberia-registered ship Toconao, BNN Breaking reported, and are the remnants of common plastic items like plastic bags and water bottles.

The environmental incident elicited a local response.

“People started sending us photos on Instagram of the bags on Espiñeirido beach,” said Madison Hourihan, founder of environmental group Noia Limpa, reported Euro Weekly News.

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The group noticed an increase in the sightings around Christmas that indicated the spill happened on December 6.

The representative of Madrid in Galicia said regional coast guards were first informed of the incident by the maritime rescue service on December 20, Reuters reported.

Alfonso Rueda, regional leader of Galicia, said the central government was aware of the pellets for more than two weeks before informing his administration on January 4.

The “inaction two weeks after detecting the spill” was criticized by Ecologistas en Acción, a Spanish grassroots league of ecological groups. Ecologistas en Acción said it would file a complaint against the ship’s Dutch owner Toucan Maritime.

Noia Limpa found about 70 bags along the coastline, weighing approximately 55 pounds each, reported Euro Weekly News. The bags came from Polish company Bedeko Europe — the manufacturer of the pellets — but had broken, scattering the tiny plastic pieces on the beach. The pellets have a diameter of less than five millimeters and are lightweight, making them hard to remove from the fine sand.

On Monday, hundreds of volunteers used shovels and colanders to sift through the sand, Reuters reported.

Eighty percent of all debris found in marine environments — from deep-sea sediments to surface waters — is made up of plastic, which gets ingested by marine species who also frequently become entangled in the plastic waste, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Maria Jesus Montero told Televisión Española — Spain’s state-owned public broadcasting company — that the government was concerned about the potential for “serious repercussions,” but wasn’t yet sure of the incident’s impact or if fishing would be affected, reported Reuters.

The beach cleanup was a reminder of the oil spill that brought a halt to fishing in Galicia in 2002.

“Unfortunately, we are all reminded of images from the past that we would like to erase,” Montero said, as Reuters reported.