Major sea clean-up after plastics spillage
EFFORTS to clean up an environmental ‘catastrophe’ in south Co. Dublin escalated yesterday – as fears grew that a spillage of plastic fibres could damage countless seals, birds and fish.
Specialist divers, boats and even a helicopter were sent out to search for ‘millions’ of pieces of plastic that had escaped into the sea.
An international marine expert also arrived on the scene yesterday to lead investigations into how an estimated 100kg of thin plastic fibres escaped from €10million building works on the iconic Dún Laoghaire Baths.
The ecological disaster was first spotted by walkers along pretty Sandycove Beach on Friday morning.
Horrified local resident Gráinne Grehan collected four shopping bags of the needle-like 5cm plastic pieces before she was joined by dozens of families who trawled the sand and scrambled over rocks near the popular Forty Foot in a bid to stop the plastic fibres spreading out.
It was several hours before builders from the Dún Laoghaire Baths site arrived to assist on Friday, but official clean-up efforts ratcheted up over the weekend with the help of council staff, with a helicopter doing a sweep of the coast.
SIAC chief Martin Maher explained that the fibres came away from concrete it had poured in the seabed. The plastic is used to strengthen the concrete. ‘It hasn’t happened previously. We regret that it happened and will put mitigation in place to ensure it never happens again,’ he said. By 2pm yesterday a hefty 70kg of plastic debris had been collected.
But Harriet Donnelly, whose 11-year-old daughter Flossie is a well known blogger on the issue of marine plastic pollution, said: ‘This is a crisis... There were millions of these tiny 2mm-wide sharp bits of plastic so it’s possible they will be snagged underwater in seaweed and rocks.
‘This stuff has probably already been eaten by seal pups, birds and fish and could puncture their insides.’