To Save The World's Oceans
Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel
On a sailing trip from Hawaii to California in 1997 Captain
Charles Moore made a fateful change of course that changed the direction of
his life.
Trying to get home in a windless sea, Moore took a shortcut
that put him in the middle of a "plastic soup" ocean strewn with
plastic litter - bottles, bottle caps, rope, fishing nets and "broken-down
bits of former things."
Later in Natural History
magazine Moore wrote, “As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to
have been a pristine ocean I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with
the sight of plastic."
This accidental discovery of flotsam and jetsam a thousand
miles from land in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean would eventually come to
be called the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch. And, like the canary in a coal mine, it would stand as a warning
to civilization of the man-made dangers floating in the sea.
Unable to forget this ocean of trash, Moore created the Algalita
Research Foundation and dedicated his life to keeping plastic pollution out
of the ocean.
Sailor, scientist, author and environmentalist, Captain Charles
Moore has received numerous awards. And, when he speaks about the dangers of plastic
in our oceans, people listen. SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel saw
this firsthand recently at the Surfrider Foundation Huntington/Seal
Beach Chapter’s meeting.
The room was packed. Everyone wanted to talk to Captain
Moore and get autographed copies of his critically-acclaimed book Plastic
Ocean (co-written with Cassandra Phillips).
Many have compared it to Rachel Carson's landmark
1962 book Silent Spring that alerted the world to the dangers of
pesticides in the environment.
Moore informed the audience that the plastic pollution is so
bad that there's currently "six pounds of plastic in the ocean for every
pound of plankton."
Autopsies have found that some fish
had stomachs almost entirely filled with indigestible plastics. Plastic is
ingested by sea turtles, seals, birds and other animals, too - either directly
or when they eat the fish. And, ultimately, having entered the food chain, the
plastic is eaten by man.
Anyone who hears Moore speak or reads his book can't help
but feel sorrow for the fate of the ocean's sea life from plastics. Moore
quotes renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle's book Sea Change,
noting "even though plastics lack their own 'detectable aroma...they
bring to the sea the smell of death.'"
Since Moore first discovered the sea
of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean the Algalita research team has made
multiple expeditions to its location in the North Pacific Gyre (a ring-like
circle of rotating currents).
The foundation's ocean research
vessel the Alguita is a 50-foot, 25-ton catamaran with
state-of-the-art electronics. Currently it is developing a Plastic Ocean
Index using geographical information system (GIS) data to enable
researchers to monitor and track the presence of plastic in the ocean. A
Herculean task, this is vitally important.
150 million
tons of plastic waste are in the ocean now.
8 million more tons of plastic are added each year.
By 2050 the plastic in the ocean will outweigh the fish
Moore continues to warn people about the irreparable damage
that can come from the products we use every day - plastic bottles, cups and
straws, utensils, take-out containers, shipping pellets, fishing lines and nets…
even party balloons. Things that all become deadly when discarded into the
world's waterways and oceans.
The New York Times
calls Captain Charles Moore "A hero." So does the Peter Benchley
Ocean Awards organization and many others. In the words of Forbes
magazine, his book Plastic Ocean is "a hero's call to action."
With Earth’s fate hanging in the
balance, it's critical that we heed that call.
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Sunny
Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted
material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com
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