The following article was written by Professor Amy Kabrhel, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry, UW-Green Bay, Manitowoc Campus.
In the Summer of 2022, Manitowoc Public Library and I teamed up to host a series of Citizen Science activities related to keeping our local beaches clean. Citizen Science is a national program where anyone interested can help scientists collect data for their research. This is beneficial because the data sets are either too large to be collected by one research group or too distant from the research group’s primary location to make data collection financially feasible. Citizen Scientists are quickly trained—usually via YouTube videos—to collect the requested data and then send it along to the researcher.
MPL and I decided to work with Nurdle Patrol. Nurdles are tiny plastic pellets about the size of a lentil that are the raw material used to make most of the plastic items we use daily, such as plastic utensils, straws, bags, bottles, and more. Because of their small size, some nurdles are often lost during shipment from their manufacturing site to the site that makes the plastic items mentioned previously.
Also, billions of nurdles can be lost if there is an accident with their shipping container. For instance, a spill released a massive amount of nurdles into the Gulf of Mexico in September 2018. This prompted the researchers at the University of Texas’s Marine Science Institute to start Nurdle Patrol—a citizen science project to monitor the spread of nurdle pollution due to this spill and others. The Nurdle Patrol website (www.nurdlepatrol.org) trains citizens on how to spot, collect, and record nurdles found on beaches in their locations.
Last fall, MPL and I performed three Nurdle Patrol events and we found 200+ nurdles total on Manitowoc beaches. This was shocking to us as there has not been a large spill in the Great Lakes region, but nurdles float on water, so they are likely migrating from areas of other spills. Nurdles are small enough for many animals to mistake them for fish eggs and other food, which can either poison them or clog their digestive tracts (or both).

Amy Kabrhel
This spring, MPL and I will be hosting two more Nurdle Patrol events: Sunday, April 23, 9 AM, at the wayside on Memorial Drive directly across the highway from Renee’s Chocolates in Two Rivers, followed by another on Sunday, May 21, 9 AM, at the beach near the bridge in Silver Creek Park in Manitowoc. To provide even more service to our local beaches, we will be cleaning these beaches while hunting for nurdles.
The beach cleanups are being done in collaboration with the Alliance for the Great Lakes (www.greatlakes.org), and we will have participants record the amount of various types of trash collected at each cleanup. All are welcome to participate in these beach cleanups, however children 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult. And registration is required!
Participants will be provided with brief training, gloves, trash bags, sieves, and nurdle vials. They will work in teams of 2-6 to collect and record the amount of trash, as well as the number of nurdles found. MPL will collect the nurdles and display them in the Youth Services Department of the Library. We will also properly dispose of all trash collected.
For more information and to register for these events, please visit Manitowoc Public Library or https://www.manitowoclibrary.org/nurdlepatrol.