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Nurdle training will be part of MLK's Day of Service

Nurdle training today to honor MLK's Day of Service
Posted at 12:43 PM, Jan 20, 2020
and last updated 2020-01-20 13:55:08-05

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Training will take place today in conjunction with the MLK Day of Service for those who want to help protect the environment.

The Friends of Mustang Island State Park will be showing folks what a nurdle is, how to find one and why they're causing a big problem on our local beaches.

They're tiny and almost hard to spot.

They're called nurdles.

But what exactly is a nurdle?

“Small,plastic pellets, that are getting out,” said Jace Tunnell, reserve director at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. “They've never even been made into a product yet, they're sort of the basis for everything plastic.”

Tunnell will be the key speaker at the nurdle patrol training.

He says these pellets are from manufacturing spills or transporting of materials.

“We've never seen them in the concentrations that we're seeing them now, and nobody has done anything to map them to see how many there are at what locations,” Tunnell said.

In just a few minutes, you can find these tiny nurdles on our Texas coastline.

Tunnell says that in a matter of a 10-minute span, people have found between 20 and 150 of these nurdles.

Friends of Mustang Island officials say nurdle training is important because plastic pellets are extremely hazardous to our native wildlife.

“So we know that birds, sea turtles, fish eat these things, and so if they eat enough of them there's no nutritional value and so they could starve to death,” Tunnell said.

In the nurdle patrol training, Tunnell will discuss how to find these nurdles and what can be done when collected.

According to nurdlepatrol.org, there have been more than 250,000 nurdles that have been found since September 2018.

And it's only the beginning of one day eradicating all nurdles in our environment.

The nurdle training is free and it's happening at Mustang Island State Park at 1 p.m. today.