Plastic beads wash up on beach near Brisbane after pipe breach

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Thousands of small plastic beads have washed up on a beach north of Brisbane after a water pipe breach at a CSIRO centre. The agency says the plastic was released into a wastewater well, and then into the ocean, on Monday.

Transcript

00:00 They're tiny, plastic and started turning up on Brabby Island beaches last night.

00:07 Thousands of them.

00:08 I couldn't walk more than a metre without finding one.

00:11 Concerned locals sprang into action early.

00:13 We wanted to make sure we got here on the high tide and collect as many as we could

00:19 before the next high tide.

00:21 The plastics are called bio-media and are used to filter water in aquaculture research.

00:26 The CSIRO says 40,000 of the small plastic beads were flushed into the sea from here

00:31 at the Brabby Island Research Centre.

00:33 They're non-toxic, but the local environment group fears they're just the right size to

00:38 be ingested by marine life.

00:40 There's so many of them, so tiny and really hard plastic and what was going through my

00:47 mind is what's going to be in the sea trying to eat these little pieces.

00:54 The plastic is picked up by seagulls, dugongs, any of the native fish and think it's food

01:01 and in the end it'll eventually kill them.

01:03 Heavy machinery was called in to help rake up the debris.

01:07 Moreton Bay Regional Council says a significant number of the plastics have now been removed.

01:12 It's really important to us that we continue to deliver a beautiful, pristine beach for

01:16 our residents and our visitors and also for our environment.

01:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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