But concerningly, another environmental tragedy has unfolded from the crash – the spilling of millions of plastic pellets, which threaten important seabird, marine mammal and fish populations in the North Sea. Plastic pellets, often called nurdles, are the pre-production components of nearly all plastic items. When a shipping container full of plastic pellets fell off the container ship CMA CGM Bianca in the Port of New Orleans, it spilled millions of plastic pellets into the Mississippi River. An estimated 10 trillion plastic pellets enter the environment each year. Mourning yet another environmental tragedy in our oceans is not enough.