Chennai: More than a week after a Liberia-flagged vessel sank off the Kerala coast, spilling plastic nurdles into the sea, pollution studies began along the southern Tamil Nadu coast. A team from the national centre for coastal research (NCCR) was stationed in Kanyakumari to collect beach and coastal water samples to assess the potential impact of the spill. “It will be a recurring survey. Our team started collecting samples in Kanyakumari and may extend the collection up to Kudankulam. This will serve as baseline data to assess whether the accident affected our coast,” said R S Kankara, director, NCCR. “This report will serve as a supplement to the Tamil Nadu govt’s ongoing assessment efforts,” he added. The collected data will be compared with time-series data from NCCR’s routine coastal monitoring programme. NCCR researchers routinely monitor seawater quality under the Seawater Quality Monitoring Programme, collecting physical, chemical, and biological samples from 50 locations across the country, including seven along the TN coast.On May 25, the container vessel MSL ELSA 3 sank about 38 nautical miles (about 70 km) off the Kerala coast, between Vizhinjam and Kochi. The ship was carrying 640 containers, including 13 with hazardous materials such as calcium carbide, along with 84.44 tonnes of diesel and 367.1 tonnes of furnace oil. In the days following the accident, plastic nurdles from the ship began washing up along the Kerala coast and drifting towards Tamil Nadu. Tuticorin-based NGO Suganthi Devadasan Marine Research Institute (SDMRI) is also carrying out a comprehensive pollution study across 20 locations, starting from Neerody, a village near Tamil Nadu’s southernmost tip.