There’s nothing Brits love greater than tucking right into a portion of freshly made chips fries and a steaming cut of battered fish by the seaside, but in a sight less seen, one English beach found its pebbled shores awash with a layer of thinly sliced frites, garnished with a smattering of onions.
1000’s of baggage of French fries washed up on a beach near the southern coastal town of Eastbourne last week after a shipping container carrying food packages got here ashore, enveloping the realm in uncooked oven fries.
Joel Bonnici, who lives in Eastbourne and helped with the cleanup, told the BBC he “needed to look twice” while walking last Saturday in Falling Sands, near the Beachy Head cliffs.
“The beach looked just like the Caribbean golden sands,” he told the outlet.
“In some areas the chips were two-and-a-half feet deep into the bottom.
“Amongst the weird sightings of washed up items — including onions found earlier this week — nothing compares to this.”
Onions washed up on a beach in East Sussex, England.
Plastic Free Eastbourne / Facebook
An area beach sustainability group caught wind of the “chip wreck” and arranged a cleanup.
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“We went to falling sands to assist the community clear up the mess from a shipping container that has spilled 1000’s of baggage of chips and onions throughout this vulnerable stretch of land,” Plastic Free Eastbourne wrote in a Facebook post.
The group of seasoned volunteers are accustomed to picking up all types of trash, from scrap metal to fishing rods, but literal sea-salted fries were an unexpected first and posed several challenges, including separating the broken plastic bags the fries were transported in from the food waste, in addition to removing the washed-up shipping container from which they spilled.
“Removing the plastic bags is a priority,” Bonnici added.
He said a small colony of seals living nearby was liable to harm from the plastic left by the container.
“I scuba dive quite recurrently, and I do know what seals are like,” he said. “In the event that they see the baggage they may play with them or try to eat them.”
In total, three shipping containers washed up in East Sussex on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for HM Coastguard told the outlet that a container also washed up off the coast of Littlehampton, West Sussex, about 58 km from Eastbourne, and still others in neighbouring beach towns, including Selsey, Newhaven, Rustington, Rottingdean and Beachy Head.
The containers washed ashore after 16 toppled off a cargo ship near the Isle of Wight last month, and days later, several containers fell from two more ships nearby.
Eastbourne Borough Council thanked staff and volunteers for helping with the cleanup efforts.
“I would love to thank the volunteers who’re out helping us clean up the beach in Eastbourne and along our seafront,” Coun. Stephen Holt, leader of Eastbourne Borough Council, wrote on Facebook.
“We know the way essential our seafront is, and so to make sure the clean-up is accomplished as quickly as possible,” he continued.
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