Chennai, June 5 Over a week after the Liberia-flagged container vessel MSL ELSA 3 sank off the Kerala coast, spilling plastic nurdles and other pollutants into the Arabian Sea, a coastal pollution assessment has commenced along Tamil Nadu’s southern shoreline.
The National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, has deployed a team in Kanyakumari to collect seawater and beach sediment samples.
The study aims to determine whether the spill has impacted Tamil Nadu’s marine and coastal ecosystems.
“This will be a recurring survey. Our team began sample collection from Kanyakumari and may extend up to Kudankulam. The findings will help create baseline data to understand if the incident has affected our coast,” said Dr. R.S. Kankara, Director of NCCR.
“The results will supplement the Tamil Nadu government’s ongoing environmental monitoring efforts,” he added.
The data from this study will be compared with historical datasets collected under NCCR’s Seawater Quality Monitoring Programme.
The programme monitors physical, chemical, and biological parameters at 50 coastal locations across India, including seven along the Tamil Nadu coast.
The MSL ELSA 3 sank on May 25, approximately 70 km off the Kerala coast, between Vizhinjam and Kochi.
The vessel was carrying 640 containers, including 13 loaded with hazardous materials such as calcium carbide.
It also had 84.44 tonnes of diesel and 367.1 tonnes of furnace oil on board.
In the aftermath of the incident, plastic nurdles — small plastic pellets used as raw material in manufacturing — began washing ashore along the Kerala coastline.
Marine currents have since carried some of the debris towards the Tamil Nadu coast, raising concerns of a wider environmental impact.
Alongside NCCR’s efforts, the Tuticorin-based NGO Suganthi Devadasan Marine Research Institute (SDMRI) has also launched an independent pollution study.
Their team is collecting samples from 20 coastal locations, beginning from Neerody, a fishing village near Tamil Nadu’s southernmost tip.
Marine biologists and environmentalists have raised alarms over the potential long-term effects of nurdle pollution, including harm to marine life, disruption of food chains, and risks to coastal livelihoods.
The findings from both NCCR and SDMRI are expected to provide crucial insights into the extent of the spill’s impact and guide future mitigation measures.
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