Nurdles in paradise

So, if you thought of nurdles at all, it may have been as a benign cricketing term ('nurdling into the gap' can be a good move for batsmen). Not so benign in this form. Take a good look at the small (approx 3mm across) pellets of plastic in this (8cm high) bottle. Look around you wherever you are and you are likely to see the same colours of plastic in household or garden goods.

These are 'nurdles' - mostly pre-production plastic pellets - collected in 20 minutes from a random metre square of remote beach on the eastern shoreline of Scotland. They are washed out of transport tankers and off docksides straight into the ocean and journey around the globe. Nurdles join micro-plastics from cosmetics and the many items of plastic garbage from our disposable society that are polluting our seas. They have been found choking small marine creatures that mistake them for food - and carry an additional payload of hydrophobic chemicals that attach to them in the ocean.

Suddenly "nurdling into the gap" takes on an altogether more sinister meaning for humans dependent on marine productivity. And if only plastic could be converted to Ashes as easily as the English cricket team's nurdles are in Melbourne this week.

There is no green without blue

Adding Oceans to Future Earth's labels and highlighting this great site from the Blue World Alliance on the horror of ocean plastics.

The pic (packet was not planted) was snapped on the shores of West Kalimantan a couple of years ago- ancient natural roots despoiled by flashy modern rubbish.

Sea clearly

Casting an eye today on things marine (with the help of Violet the octopus above) I am swimming against the current of my usual stream of invective about Plastic in Paradise.

Only four years ago, I listened to a marine scientist taling about the new application of the "ecosystem approach" to undersea landscapes, and was astonished by how blinkered marine planning must have been to only just be discovering that connectivity and starting to use that language. Well, as global awareness about the state of our environment has risen since then, marine conservationists have been able to ride the crest of the wave and raise a flag or two in the public eye. All credit to the Marine Conservation Society - especially for providing clear information about what we can do in response even as individuals.

Something to watch closely around the world is leglislation that can follow in the wake of public concern. The creation of marine protected areas is such an obvious response as we look to regain a healthy sea for a healthy planet - but beset still by waves of indifference in public sectors unable to look below the surface of the problem. In the UK though, the legistlative process around the marine bill is launched and is setting sail. All voters and all those concerned beyond the shores of this small island can help provide a fair wind for its smooth passage.

Personal plastic

Personal carbon might be logged on a personal plastic card and swiped at the point of purchase. More plastic in use around the planet. Could it be made from recycled plastic waste from Arjay's household - here's a months supply, and thats despite an effort to cut down, thinking of addled albatross chicks. Not as easy to recycle as we might like to think, these pernicious, persistent polymers proliferating prettily around the planet.

Plastic in Paradise (2)

Arjay recently found these mangrove roots meandering across a beach in Borneo, protecting the shoreline from turbulent tides and gathering the glittering detritus of mankind.

For a gritty reality check on just how much we are rubbishing our marine environment (and damaging our own health) see "Garbage Island" :

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505

Not pretty.

Plastic in Paradise

Yet another load of non-degradable plastic makes its precarious way into the beautiful, diverse and disappearing forests of Indonesian Borneo.

At the end of this particular road, Arjay saw people finding the plastic paraphernalia very useful for their daily subsistence. Traffic in the other direction was of tapped, raw rubber and sweaty, rotting oil palm fruits ... both of which are converted into indispensable (?) trappings of life in more populous cities across land and sea.

But this is not entirely bad news. Both rubber and oil palm plantations in this area are small-scale local community lots used as cash crops in the local economies and the distant forest you see there is currently protected from the big commercial outfits. Why might this remain? Just look - along the many miles of this road runs a bright blue pipe, taking fresh mountain water to the people of the regional capital. How about that for a demonstrable ecosystem service?

Albatross Anthem

IT IS a baby Albatross,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long great beak and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

He holds him with his trusting stare,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
‘It spewed out all this plastic stuff
Into the azure sea.

And now the storm-blast came, and it
Were tyrannous and strong:
The plastic lay above the beach
Where nesting birds belong.

The stuff was here, the stuff was there,
The stuff was all around:
We thought it looked like little fish
And scoffed all that we found.

We ate the food we ne'er had eat,
And round and round did spew.
We started dying one by one
Not many made it through’.

‘But I have come to help you out -
A conservation trooper.
We are averred, to save the bird
from such a major blooper.
Ah wretch! We say, the plastic day,
Has gone – is that not super?’

We looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew our eyes away
We looked upon the plastic beach,
And vowed it would not stay.
We’d bury it for 50 years
No albatross would feast
Of plastic fare, we’d save the life,
Of man and bird and beast. .

We went like those that hath been stunned,
And worked through dusk and dawn:
Both sadder and yet wiser men,
We rose the morrow morn.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7312777.stm