Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a visible symbol of the dangers of pollution and overuse to our planet’s oceans. Located in the North Pacific Ocean, the swirling vortex of human garbage has grown to a size that rivals continents.

Captain Charles Moore, who discovered the “great patch,” will return to the University of North Carolina Wilmington to discuss the patch, the pollution of the ocean and what we can do to stop it at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15 in Lumina Theater. He will sign his new book Plastic Ocean following his talk. Moore's research on plastic pollution in the North Pacific Ocean has focused worldwide attention on the area and the problem.

Moore discovered the great patch in 1997 on a return sail from a transpacific sailing race. As he sailed through the North Pacific Gyre, he came upon an enormous landscape of floating debris. Subsequent research has estimated the garbage patch stretches across a massive expanse of ocean, with estimates ranging from 270,000 square miles to 5.8 million square miles, anywhere from 0.41 to 8.1 percent of the entire Pacific Ocean. At the higher ranges of estimation, the patch could be twice as large as the continental United States.

The patch includes light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, plastic bottles and tiny pieces of broken down plastic, each the size of a grain of rice. The rotating currents of the gyre have collected and trapped the trash over a period of decades.

While a UNCW graduate student, Bonnie Monteleone, studying the plastic accumulation in the ocean, volunteered as a crewmember with Moore on a scientific voyage to the patch. She hoped they would find at least one sample from the area that contained no trash.

"Just one area — just one," she said. "That's all I wanted to see. But everywhere there was plastic."

Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, has been published in numerous science journals, as well as in mainstream press such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and Sierra Club magazine. He has also been featured on Nightline and Good Morning America.

The amount of plastic pollution in the Pacific and the consequences it may have for the oceans, the planet and human health has been a subject of research in recent years.

Moore's talk, "The Greatest Infection of the Sea," is free and open to the public. To learn more about Plastic Ocean, visit www.plasticoceanthebook.com. Additional information on Moore and the Algalita Foundation is available online at www.algalita.org.

Media Contact:
William Davis, UNCW Marketing and Communications, 910.962.2654 or davisw@uncw.edu