Buoyant, the size of a lentil and almost impossible to recover: how nurdles are polluting the oceans

A dead fish full of the ‘nurdles’ that are plastic’s raw material; sea creatures eat them thinking they are eggs. Photograph: Chamila Karunarathne/EPA

When a Liberian-flagged container ship, the MSC Elsa 3, capsized and sank 13 miles off the coast of Kerala, in India, on 25 May, a state-wide disaster was quickly declared. A long oil slick from the 184-metre vessel, which was carrying hazardous cargo, was partially tackled by aircraft-borne dispersants, while a salvage operation sealed tanks to prevent leaks.

But almost three months later, a more insidious and persistent environmental catastrophe is continuing along the ecologically fragile coast of the Arabian Sea. Among the 643 containers onboard were 71,500 sacks of tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles. By July, only 7,920 were reportedly recovered.