Microplastics: Citizen scientists on the hunt for nurdles

You have to look close – on-your-hands-and-knees close. Once you start to see them, you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again.

Mark McReynolds is trying to bring these tiny preproduction plastic pellets known as nurdles into focus. They’ve been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks – and public notice – for decades. They accumulate where water inevitably takes them, and they’ve been found on shorelines of every continent.

Dr. McReynolds and his citizen scientist volunteers are part of a global movement studying the nurdle trail into the environment. He conducts a complex monthly microplastic sampling and a twice-annual nurdle hunt. Charting the count, noting tide, current, and weather conditions will show if amounts are increasing, and perhaps at what rate and why.

“Knowledge opens your eyes,” he says. So he explains the science of nurdles and microplastics to curious beachwalkers while keeping an eye on volunteers troweling sand into 5-gallon buckets.

In the six months the Monitor has observed the beach surveys, the universal parting response from passersby is a variation of “Thank you for what you’re doing.”

Crystal Cove State Park, Calif.

This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a fortress of 80-foot bluffs is a California tourism poster if there ever was one. Nothing disturbs the pristine, sunny view, except – once you’re aware of them – the nurdles.

But you have to look close – on-your-hands-and-knees close – to see one. And once you do, you see another and another – so many that you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again.

Mark McReynolds is trying to bring into focus these tiny preproduction plastic pellets that manufacturers melt down to mold everything from car bumpers to toothpaste caps. They’ve been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks – and public notice – for decades.

Dr. McReynolds is an environmental scientist with the Christian conservation nonprofit A Rocha International who’d never heard of nurdles three years ago. He’s now joined a global movement studying their trail into the environment. Some – like the Great Nurdle Hunt and the Nurdle Patrol – map nurdles through informal online reporting by citizen scientists around the globe.

“Knowledge opens your eyes. You don’t see plastic bags blowing around [on this beach] because people pick them up,” says Dr. McReynolds. “But, they’re not picking up the stuff that’s 3 millimeters [because] they don’t even know it’s there.”