JJust behind the crowd of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing the sand on all fours. Their job is to try to remove millions of black plastic biobeads the size of peppercorns from where they have settled in the sand. Behind them, a seal corpse grins menacingly, teeth protruding from its rotting skull.
Camber Sands Beach experienced an environmental disaster last week of what could be an unprecedented scale. Southern Water's Eastbourne wastewater treatment plant has suffered a mechanical problem. threw away millions of bioballs on the Sussex coast. South water has since taken responsibility for spill. Ironically, biobeads are used to treat wastewater: bacteria attach to their rough, wrinkled surface and cleanse the water of contaminants.
In the days that followed, volunteers flocked to the beach. On a cold November morning under a blue sky, they painstakingly select tiny beads by hand. It's mind-numbingly tedious work.
Others – much to the envy of the collectors – have sieves. One volunteer made a sieve from an onion bag found nearby.
“We scoop up the sand, then empty the bucket into a sieve and then pour the water on top until just the beads are left,” says Hastings resident Roisin O'Gorman.
Andy Dinsdale, founder of Strandliners, an environmental organization that cleans beaches, says: “They have to get on their hands and knees almost all the way to the shoreline. [the line of seaweed and other debris that lines the high water mark on beaches]to look for very small black granules with a diameter of 5 mm. We can only do our best.”
He is visibly exhausted from the days-long effort to coordinate the cleanup. He said he missed his son's birthday party to be here.
Despite their valiant efforts, many volunteers feel helpless. Walking forces the plastic further into the sand, and overfilled trash bags can crack, sending workers back to square one. “Kneeling on the sand and just picking them out one by one is no use,” says despairing Nick, a volunteer from Tunbridge Wells.
To make a bigger dent, specialists brought a special machine. “Remember the Teletubbies?” says Dinsdale. He points about a mile down the beach, towards what looks like a giant vacuum cleaner, remarkably reminiscent of character Noo-Noo from a children's television series – sucks a carpet made of black beads.
This microplastic removal machine is the invention of Joshua Beach, an environmental scientist and founder of the waste collection organization Nurdle. “It works by vacuuming up material, separating it by density, and then sifting and separating it at the back. [of the machine] so it ends up as almost pure plastic in the collection trays,” he says.
Beach and his colleague Roy Beal spent five grueling days vacuuming the beach from sunrise to sunset. Beach lifts the heavy bait over his shoulders, and Beel holds it under his arm. “He has the shoulders of a rugby player,” says Beale. “I have the shoulders of a kayaker.”
They hope that removing as many biobeads as possible will help prevent more damage.
Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter, says microplastics “overlap the prey size of many marine organisms and can enter the food web with the potential to transport contaminants into cells and tissues.”
They can also break down and leach harmful compounds that interfere with animal hormones and cause reproductive problems. Local residents are already concerned about the unusual number of stranded animals – three seals and a porpoise – that recently washed ashore. At this stage, the UK's Cetacean Stranding Investigation Program (CSIP), which investigates strandings, does not believe the deaths are related to the spill.
Rye Harbor Nature Reserve, adjacent to Camber Sands, is the Sussex Wildlife Trust's largest nature reserve. This special area is a “matrix of wetland habitat” influenced and connected to the sea, says site manager Paul Tinsley-Marshall. “Vegetated shingle is a globally threatened habitat.” It is home to over 4,355 species, including common, sandwich and little terns, oystercatchers, plovers and avocets. Biobead contamination has been confirmed in Rye Harbor and the sanctuary team is currently assessing the damage and carefully planning the cleanup of this sensitive habitat.
Two large-scale bioball incidents have previously been reported to the EPA, in 2010 and 2017, according to Strandliners.
“This is the worst microplastic spill we've seen this year,” Beach says. Even worse than a spill granules (pre-production plastic granules) in March, when two ships collided in the North Sea. Plastic pellets have been washed up on Norfolk beaches and surrounding coastlines.
The harm caused by biobeads in Camber may depend on their composition. Beads like this used to be recycled from potentially toxic e-waste before regulations were passed in 2006. No one knows when the beads were made, Dinsdale says.
Since the sun is set to set at 4:20 pm, time on the beach is limited. “We're struggling with the sunshine,” said volunteer Kate Lamb, who traveled from London with her partner Khalid Flynn and eight-year-old Maya Flynn. “We feel like we're fighting a bit of a losing battle because of the scale of the problem.”
At this point her bucket will crack.
Rother District Council says attempts to remove all the pellets have “proven to be impossible” and that they “expect large further quantities to be deposited in the coming weeks and months”.
Beach and Nurdle's crew hope to return after the next spring tide, but that depends on whether they can cover the cost of a second cleanup.
The money they make from selling recycled film made from beach plastic is not enough to fund future cleanup efforts. “We can’t afford to go back,” Beach says. “But the environment needs our support.”
Southern Water has apologized for the spill, but Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings and Rye, wants it to go further by funding the clean-up and any future restoration of nature. She also calls for an independent investigation. “You can’t trust Southern Water to check your own homework,” she says.
