These are the bizarre objects that keep washing up on Cornish beaches – Cornwall Live

The ongoing problem of marine plastic pollution on Cornish beaches is displayed in a rainbow of colours at a new exhibition which opened earlier this week.

From mermaid's tails to Lego dragons, 'Bizarre Beachcombing' is a collection of all manner of strange objects lost at sea and washed ashore on the coastline of Cornwall.

Put together by the Friends of Portheras Cove and Centre of Pendeen community centre over the last 12 months, the free exhibition runs until August 15, 2017, and catalogues local shipwrecks and wildlife, as well as the colourful beachcombing discoveries.

Though some items that have washed up on the beaches are unique, such as a ceramic head made by a local artist, most of the objects are notable for their quantity rather than their individuality, thus highlighting the scale of the problem. In many cases, this is because they have originated from a container spill at sea.

Perhaps the most well-known example within the Cornish beachcombing community of such a spill is the one which cast millions of Lego pieces adrift.

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In February 1997 a ship called the Tokio Express lost 62 containers into the sea when it was hit by a freak wave off the coast of Cornwall. One of the containers was packed with approximately 4.8 million pieces of Lego, which, 20 years later, are still washing up on Cornish beaches.

Many of the exhibits in Bizarre Beachcombing have been collected and arranged by Delia Webb from Friends of Portheras Cove, who runs the Facebook page 'Beachcombing's Bizarre and Beautiful'.

Delia highlights another beachcleaner in the exhibition whose discoveries have gone viral on social media, Michelle Costello from Illogan, who runs Smartie-lids-on-the-Beach.

"I have been cleaning beaches for three years, removing huge amounts of washed up plastic items and rope from our beautiful beaches. Amongst the plastic on the tide line I often find micro-plastic, Lego, soldiers, lost vintage toys and Smarties lids."

Smarties lids are still found on beaches in Cornwall despite not being on sale after the packaging changed in 2005. Lids can be dated before or after 1990 depending on the branding, after Rowntree were bought by Nestle. A glass jar in the exhibition holds enough letters found on local beaches to write a story, or spell out the alphabet several times over.

Whereas Smarties lids and Lego are treasured finds for beachcombing enthusiasts, general plastic bottle tops are abundant on our beaches. This was highlighted two years ago when over 65,000 bottle tops were collected in just three months in Cornwall.

The plastic tops were threaded together by marine conservationist Dave Smethurst, to form a chain measuring over 1.1km.

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Before the beaches became littered with marine plastic, Cornwall had a rich history in bizarre objects washing up from the many shipwrecks around the coastline.

Thankfully, wrecks are a rare occurrence these days, but fragments from these lost ships can still be found on our beaches.

Some of the more interesting items that have been salvaged from shipwrecks local to the exhibition are on display, including a ship's telegraph from The Liberty, a steamship which hit the rocks below Pendeen lighthouse on January 17, 1952.

However, one of least colourful, least historical and least collectable objects on display at the exhibition is also one of the biggest problems on beaches in Cornwall, and across the globe.

Known by many marine conservations as mermaid's tears, nurdles are tiny resin pellets that are used in the manufacturing of plastic.

On one day in February this year, around 127,500 nurdles were collected from a 100-metre stretch of Widemouth Bay in Cornwall.

The Bizarre Beachcombing exhibition runs until August 15 at Centre of Pendeen community centre and admission is free.