Camber Sands, England —

Andy Dinsdale began walking the southern English coast in search of a “sea heart,” a tough Mahogany seed carried by ocean currents from Central and South American rainforests.

In his quest to find one, he inadvertently became a plastic pollution expert.

For the last 20 years, Dinsdale has witnessed the transformation of Camber Sands, a 2-mile stretch of golden sand and dunes, from one of Britain’s most cherished stretches of coast into a front line of an escalating environmental crisis .

But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw in early November. As Dinsdale and citizen scientist group Strandliners scoured the beach for a pollution survey, they discovered something peculiar: An astonishing number of black plastic pellets were littering the sand.

Millions of

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