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Last month, a large container ship caught fire off the coast of Sri Lanka and lasted for more than 10 days, and this is spreading to the worst marine pollution.
As the ship sank, small plastic pellets from it spilled out, killing the fish.
This is reporter Kim Young-ah.
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Carcasses of fish washed up on a beach in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Its body is covered with pieces of plastic smaller than a grain of rice.
A tortoise carcass found far south of the beach also had a fistful of plastic in its stomach.
They were loaded on the large container ship 'MV X-Press Pearl', which caught fire while waiting for the port of Colombo to arrive.
The fire was put out in 12 days, but as the ship began to sink two days ago, the billions of plastic pieces that were loaded there spilled into the sea.
[Moudisa Katuwawala / Sri Lanka Marine Conservation Organization official: We do not have the equipment to remove chemicals or radioactive materials. There is no equipment to remove the plastic.] Since
there is no proper equipment, the soldiers are picking up pieces of plastic washed up in the waves with a hammer and disposing them with a shovel.
Fishermen's livelihoods are threatened as fish are killed in swarms from tens of kilometers away.
[Sri Lankan fisherman: I went out to 25km and lowered the net, but when I went the next morning, there was no fish in the net.]
This boat was loaded with about 1,400 containers, 278 tons of bunker oil, 50 tons of gas, 25 tons of nitric acid, etc. There were also chemicals.
[Ajansa Ferrera/Environmentalist: This ship poses a terrible environmental hazard. It's not just about today. It will affect generations to come.]
Experts are concerned that if crude oil is spilled into the sea due to a ship sinking, the worst marine pollution situation in recent hundreds of years will be inevitable.
(Video editing: Yonghwa Jung, screen provided by Al Jazeera)