Publisher Description
In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu with the sole intention of returning home after competing in a trans-Pacific race. To get to California, he and his crew took a shortcut through the seldom-traversed North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a vast "oceanic desert" where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a "plastic soup." He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet—a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one.
In Plastic Ocean, Moore recounts his ominous findings and unveils the secret life and hidden properties of plastics. From milk jugs to polymer molecules small enough to penetrate human skin or be unknowingly inhaled, plastic is now suspected of contributing to a host of ailments including infertility, autism, thyroid dysfunction, and some cancers. A call to action as urgent as Rachel Carson's seminal Silent Spring, Moore's sobering revelations will be embraced by activists, concerned parents, and seafaring enthusiasts concerned about the deadly impact and implications of this manmade blight.
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“The author is an impassioned, fiercely inquisitive writer, detailing the many unorthodox ways he’s managed to get these issues into the news and in peer-reviewed science journals. His account is chilling, but with an underlying message of optimism: If human behaviors change, we can still save the oceans, and ourselves. Fast-paced and electrifying, Moore’s story is ‘gonzo science’ at its best.”
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Kirkus Reviews
About the Authors
Captain Charles Moore
founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation In 1994. In 1995 he launched
his aluminum hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania. Since then
he has logged over 100,000 miles of research voyages aboard. His 1999 study
shocked the scientific world when it found six times more plastic fragments by
weight in the surface waters of the central Pacific than the associated
zooplankton. His second paper found that plastic outweighs zooplankton by a
factor of 2.5 in the surface waters of Southern California.Those papers on
oceanic plastic particulate pollution contributed to his reputation as a
world-renowned investigator in this field. His study of discharges by plastic
processors resulted in the passage of a “Nurdle Bill” to prohibit the
discharge of pre-production plastic pellets in the state of California. His
work has been featured on Good Morning
America, Late Night with David Letterman, Nightline, The Colbert Report, and the National Geographic special Strange Days on Planet Earth.
Cassandra Phillips
has had a circuitous career path that includes newspaper reporting, movie
reviewing, script development in the film industry, literary agency submission
evaluation, co-ownership of commercial orchid nurseries in California and
Hawaii, USDA-funded horticulture research, and coauthorship of two books: The Passion Paradox: Patterns of Love and
Power in Intimate Relationships, with Dean Delis, PhD, and Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance
Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans, with Capt. Charles
Moore. She also coauthored, with David Boxer, the first, much-cited critical article
about Raymond Carver—Voyeurism,
Dissociation and the Art of Raymond Carver. She attended Smith, graduated
in English from Pomona, spent time in UCLA’s MFA scriptwriting program, and
earned a master’s in journalism at UC Berkeley. She and her husband, a noted
hybridizer, currently operate an orchid nursery on the Big Island, but anticipate
rejoining family in California in the near future—as they have for the past
fifteen years. They have two children, a son, Billy, and a daughter, Keely.