Nurdle Patrol

On Friday December 8th members of the Coastal Master Naturalists Association took part in a Nurdle Patrol Advanced Training Activity under guidance and instruction from Charleston Waterkeeper around the Mt. Pleasant Pier. The mission of Charleston Waterkeeper is to defend and restore Charleston's waterways so we can all fish and swim without fear of pollution.

In comes the NURDLE. Fun to say, not fun to see. A nurdle is a lentil-sized plastic pellet which serves as raw material in the manufacturing of plastic products. Nurdles are washing up on our beaches, riverbanks, and lake shorelines by the tens of thousands. One of the big problems with nurdles is that they are very small which means they can easily slip from shipping containers or production facilities and find their way to the beach, to the water, into fish, and just about everywhere else.

Anyone interested can help find and map sources by conducting their own nurdle survey. Yes- there is an app for that. Nurdle Patrol, a crowdsourced database and sampling protocol application helps anyone monitor local areas for nurdle pollution. Nurdle Patrol intends to gather information about where nurdles are located, remove the nurdles from the environment, and create awareness about the issue.

After this group of citizen scientists was given some information about nurdles in the Charleston waterways, we got to work with the sampling. There is a standardized methodology for counting that helps provide density totals for nurdles in any given area. Nurdle Patrol offers a starter kit which can help Waterkeepers, schools, and any other concerned citizens get involved in protecting their watershed from this form of plastic pollution. The Nurdle Patrol App makes it easy, and one can get started anytime. Unfortunately, the nurdle problem isn’t going away anytime soon. To learn more about monitoring and tracing nurdles in your own watershed, visit NurdlePatrol.org.