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.

View image in fullscreen Nurdles washed ashore in Kerala. Photograph: KA Shaji

Millions of these plastic balls have continued to wash ashore with the fierce monsoon storm surges that demolished a stretch of palm-fringed beach in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s capital, in June. They lie scattered by the sea-facing Catholic church at Vettukadu and in tide lines on the beach, where giant jute bags of them, gathered by volunteers, await collection.

Lightweight, buoyant and almost impossible to recover, they will circulate in moving sand and ocean currents for years, experts say.

“The nurdles haven’t just polluted the sea – they’ve disrupted our entire way of life,” says Ajith Shanghumukham, a fish worker in the town.

A fishing ban, imposed after the spill by local authorities in four Kerala districts, has since been lifted but fears over contamination have hit fishing communities already struggling with declining fish populations and the changing climate’s intensifying storms.

“Very few people now venture out to sea because the local markets simply aren’t buying fish,” says Shanghumukham.

Those who do report nets full of nurdles and declining catches. “People continue to worry about contamination,” Shanghumukham says.

While 100,000 fishing families received compensation of 1,000 rupees (£8.50) from the state, this represented less than a week’s income for most. “The crisis has plunged many families into poverty,” he says.

View image in fullscreen The wreck of the MSC Elsa 3, which sank about 14 nautical miles off Kerala with 77,000 sacks of nurdles onboard. Photograph: Indian Ministry of Defence

Nurdles, a colloquial term for the plastic pellets, are the raw material used for nearly all plastic products. Lentil-sized, at between 1-5mm, and thus potentially classifying as microplastics, or fragments smaller than 5mm, they can be devastating to wildlife, especially fish, shrimps and seabirds that mistake them for food. They also act as “toxic sponges” attracting so-called forever chemicals such as PCBs and PFAs in seawater on to their surfaces, and also carry harmful bacteria such as E coli.

Ingested by marine life, these pellets introduce a cocktail of toxins directly into the food web Joseph Vijayan

“When ingested by marine life, these pellets introduce a cocktail of toxins directly into the food web,” says Joseph Vijayan, an environmental researcher from Thiruvananthapuram. “Toxins can accumulate in individual animals and increase in concentration up the food chain, ultimately affecting humans who consume seafood.”

Microplastics have been found in human blood, brains, breast milk, placentas, semen and bone marrow. Their full impact on human health is unclear, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks.

The spill’s location and timing could not have been worse, Vijayan says. Nearly half of India’s seafish are landed in the Malabar upwelling region, where the shipwreck happened.

And Kerala’s turbulent monsoon season, from June to August, which has hampered clean-up operations, is a time of great marine productivity, when rising nutrient-rich waters bring blooms of plankton, the foundation of the marine food web.

View image in fullscreen A dead sea turtle, one of at least 90 washed ashore after the X-Press Pearl spill in 2021. Photograph: C Karunarathne/EPA

Worryingly, following the Keralan spill, there have been reports of nurdles once again washing up on beaches in Sri Lanka, a reminder of the worst recorded plastic pollution spill in history when the X-Press Pearl container ship, carrying chemicals, caught fire and released 1,680 tonnes of nurdles into the sea off Colombo in 2021.

The Kerala disaster, the latest in a series of pellet spills, has again exposed huge gaps in accountability, transparency and regulation in the plastics supply chain, environmentalists say.

Dharmesh Shah, a Kerala-based plastics campaigner at the Centre for International Environmental Law, says: “These spills expose the transboundary nature of pellet pollution, affecting countries regardless of their role in plastic production.

“They reveal a chronic lack of enforceable global standards across the supply chain – from production to transport – coupled with inadequate transparency, reporting and accountability.”

Sekhar L Kuriakose, of the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, estimates the clean-up could take up to five years. The state has filed a $1.1bn (£820m) compensation claim against MSC. The container shipping company MSC, which chartered the vessel, along with the owner, have filed a counterclaim, disputing jurisdiction and seeking to limit their liability.

But the consequences of nurdle spills are being felt globally. In March, nurdles washed up on Britain’s Norfolk coast after a container ship collided with a tanker in the North Sea. In January 2024, millions of pellets washed up on Spain’s Galician coast.

Communities can wait years for compensation. It took until last month for Sri Lanka’s highest court to rule that the X-press Pearl’s Singapore-based owners owed $1bn compensation for the 2021 sinking’s “unprecedented devastation to the marine environment” and economic harm.

View image in fullscreen Sri Lankans salvage material washed ashore from the X-Press Pearl. One problem with nurdles, says experts, is that they are not seen as hazardous material so they are shipped like any other cargo. Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP

At least 445,000 tonnes of nurdles are estimated to enter the environment annually worldwide; about 59% are terrestrial spills, with the rest at sea. The number of big nurdle spills at sea is increasing, according to Fidra, a Scottish environmental charity.

With plastic production expected to triple to more than 1bn tonnes a year by 2060, along with more frequent and intense storms, the threat is expected to grow, with some 2tn nurdles spilling into the environment a year. Yet no international agreements exist on how to package and transport nurdles safely, or even to classify them as hazardous.

This week, delegates from more than 170 countries are meeting at the UN’s plastic pollution talks in Geneva, in an effort to resolve deep divisions over whether plastic production will be included in a final treaty. Campaigners hope successful talks will allow a global approach to pellet loss, packaging, transportation and legal accountability.

View image in fullscreen Nurdles washed ashore on Spain’s coastline in Tarragona. Millions of pellets washed up after a spill off Galicia on Spain’s Atlantic coast in January last year. Photograph: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty

Amy Youngman, a lawyer at the Environmental Investigation Agency, says: “Because of the biodiversity in the area, the Kerala spill is devastating. But coming four years after the X-Pearl Xpress, it was foreseeable.”

One problem, she says, is that ships are not required to disclose they are carrying pellets. Another is the failure to recognise harm when spilled. “They are not seen as hazardous or dangerous material so they are shipped like any other produce,” she says.

Human error causes most spills, she says, adding that laws on handling and storing pellets could reduce spills by 95%.

A research paper published in June co-authored by Therese Karlsson, a scientific adviser for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, showed that plankton may well have been malformed after exposure to leached chemicals from plastic and burnt plastic debris from the X-Pearl Express. Of 16,000 chemicals in plastic, 4,000 are known to be hazardous. “But for more than 10,000 of them we don’t know the health impacts,” she says.