MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Several conservation-conscious locals cleared some ghost fishing gear, nurdles, earbud and lollipop sticks and other rubbish from the sand around the river mouth at Little Brak Beach on Friday 2 October, as part of the Great Global Nurdle Hunt.
Friday’s hunt was organised by a local, Rika Burger, in partnership with the Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve (GCBR). A few people, young and old, helped gather the rubbish into yellow plastic bags.
Nurdles, the main issue for which the clean-up was organised, are tiny plastic resin pellets that are about the size of a lentil and are used to manufacture nearly all commercial plastic products.
Burger previously told Mossel Bay Advertiser that accidental industrial spills send billions of these nurdles washing up along shorelines like ours, where marine animals mistake them for food. This results in starvation and toxic chemical buildup in the marine food chain.
A screenshot of nurdles logged across the world.
Although the official hunt was from 4 September to 4 October, Burger encouraged children, adults, families and friends to continue the hunt in the name of conserving our coast and marine life.
All one needs to do to continue this campaign and become a citizen scientist is to take a plastic bag along with you to the beach to pick up any rubbish or nurdles you see.
The nurdles you find can be logged on the Great Global Nurdle Hunt app, which can be downloaded for Android or iOS.
Burger said that as of Tuesday morning, 6 October, altogether 9 122 nurdle hunts have been logged globally. She said logging one’s findings is key for research purposes.
Visit the Great Global Nurdle Hunt’s website at www.nurdlehunt.org.uk to find out more.
If you would like to know more about how you can help locally, contact Burger by sending a message to her Instagram account, @nurdlehuntmb, or emailing her at [email protected].
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