'Plastic Ocean' Book Chronicles A Quest To Save The Seas (PHOTOS)

Captain Charles Moore had an unexpected discovery in 1997. Traveling between Hawaii and California, Moore is said to be the first to document what became known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Writing in his new book "Plastic Ocean," Moore says he didn't know he would "gain a surprising amount of notoriety as the 'discoverer' of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Since then, Moore has spent time learning about the Pacific plastic dump and the impact that so much plastic has had on fragile ocean ecosystems.

While one scientist has argued that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn't "twice the size of Texas" as others have suggested, the amount of plastic in the ocean is still an important concern.

Moore contends that the term "garbage patch" is misleading and that it is more like "plastic soup."

Speaking about the plastic in the Pacific, Moore said, "It's something that's new. It took a long time for us to believe that this change we're noticing in our climate was due to human activity; very hard to believe. This is an easier sell because it's visible," reported The Coast News.

"It's not hard to make the connection that fish are getting tangled up in this, that we're turning the beaches into plastic sand; that there's a coral reef habitat in the middle of the ocean; that there are deleterious consequences of our trash," he said.

Adding to the growing collection of garbage that is swirling in the Pacific, scientists estimate that up to 20 million tons of debris from Japan's tsunami this year is making its way east toward Hawaii.

Be sure to check out these photos of an expedition to the North Atlantic Garbage Patch.

For more information about "Plastic Ocean," on sale October 27, visit the book's website.

Quotes, images and captions reprinted from "Plastic Ocean" by Capt. Charles Moore by arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., Copyright © 2011 by Capt. Charles Moore.

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• Baby sea turtle, on its way out to sea, navigating plastic at Kamilo Beach, 2009

• Black-footed albatross on Kure Atoll, 2002

• Gyre sample, 2002

• Kamilo Beach plastic sand, 2007

• Contents of dead Laysan albatross chick's stomach, mostly bottle caps, Kure Atoll, 2002

• Laysan albatross, Kure Atoll, 2002

• Contents of dead Laysan albatross chick's stomach, mostly bottle caps, Kure Atoll, 2002

• Masked boobies and flotsam on Kure Atoll, 2002

• Contents of single myctophid stomach, eighty-three plastic fragments, compared with natural food, 2008.

• Monk seal in ghost net on Kure Atoll, 2002

Comments

[Carol Covin]

07:27 PM on 11/01/2011

It's not just that birds and fish and turtles are getting caught up in plastic rings and plastic bags. It's that the tiny pellets of plastic are now in our food chain because birds and fish are eating them. It's no longer a matter of sieving the water. We have to address the source. http://newgrandmas.com/?p=6798

[vetxcl]

09:44 PM on 10/27/2011

BPa , (bisphenol a) in most plastics messes up hormonal systems of all carbon based life forms. And that's easily verifiable.

[vetxcl]

09:42 PM on 10/27/2011

Don't waste time argueing whether to call it garbage patch, plastic soup or gyre. Just figure out a way to profitably collect and recycle it!

[muhair]

04:27 PM on 10/28/2011

How about picking up all the bird poop in the U.S.? That would be an equivalent task. Garbage patches exist throughout the oceans, and oceans are 70% of the earth's surface. If you were somehow able to get thousands of ships to trawl the most polluted areas with nets fine enough to do the job, you'd remove the base of the marine food chain, plankton. With the Japanese tsunami debris spreading across the Pacific, not to mention floods in Thailand and, last spring, in the Mississippi watershed, good luck! Marine inputs of trash far exceed what could ever be taken out. Plastic packaging and bags simply need to be marine degradable.

[vetxcl]

10:39 PM on 10/27/2011

Nice to see someone noticing this under-reported and damaging consequence of our use and discard society.

[Harvey Lacey]

09:41 PM on 10/27/2011

When I was in Haiti I watched a man with snow shoe looking pieces of foam on his shoes walk on water covered with stryrofoam trash. He was picking up plastic bottles because they are worth about five cents per pound.

A canal/sewer about twenty five yards wide covered with a layer of foam and film plastic trash thick enough to support a man's weight. This is real and it isn't unique in developing nations.

This scene was less than a kilometer from the ocean. That means the next storm was going to flush the canal and all of that plastic was going into the ocean. This is happening all over the world. Everywhere there is a slum in a developing nation annual flooding flushes the trash from the roadways into the water ways and then out to the ocean.

The only way we are going to change this is to give value to the plastic trash. Keep in mind the image of the man risking his life walking on an open sewer/canal to pick out the plastic bottles for five cents per pound.

Ubuntu-blox gives plastic trash value because building blocks for homes are made without any carbon expense, no heat, no chemicals.

[June25]

09:37 AM on 10/29/2011

Not a bad idea a small floating city like in waterworld populated with castoffs from thirdworld countries collecting garbage to clean up the seas.

[maxie1]

08:43 PM on 10/27/2011

We all need to make changes reuseable bags-refuse styrofoam-drive less when possible- recycling laws-pick up litter on beach/river-green products from shampoo to fertilizer to water filter.Small steps work for me. Most of all, I try to pass it on.

[maxie1]

08:27 PM on 10/27/2011

Capt Moore-Tara Theater Litchfield SC-Nov 16- new book "Plastic Ocean" sign & presentation

[El Justiciero]

05:54 PM on 10/27/2011

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. Stop buying bottled water. Stop buying drinks in plastic bottles. If you have to have soda, get a Soda Stream. Come on, people!

[bad spelling grammar]

05:43 PM on 10/27/2011

why cant we clean it up?

[El Justiciero]

05:57 PM on 10/27/2011

Why clean it up when it can easily be ignored. Caring means being dismissed as a tree hugging hippie. Of course I'm being overly cynical. I'm happy to volunteer for clean-up organizations like River Link in NC. I wish more people felt a sense of civic & environmental duty.

[333Cathy]

04:02 PM on 10/27/2011

People who litter disgust me.

[RhynoH]

02:10 PM on 10/27/2011

I saw a graphic the other day that said this:
"It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape is appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it and bring it home is considered to be LESS effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it."

We have become a lazy society.

[muhair]

03:20 PM on 10/27/2011

You sound like a job killer.
But in a good way.

[RhynoH]

01:43 PM on 10/31/2011

I'm not in the 1% (job creators). Logic then dictates that I'm in the 99%, or "job killers." Hehe. But aren't those plastic spoons made in China anyway? Wouldn't that be helping the trade deficit by using non-plastic cutlery?

[LaoShur]

02:18 AM on 10/27/2011

Beautiful pictures of a Republican, conservative Christian wonderland!! Kill the EPA!!! Scrap the Clean Air and Water Act!!! Create more jobs that creates more of this garbage!!

[El Justiciero]

05:51 PM on 10/27/2011

I haven't seen it. It doesn't exist. It's all done with computers so Al Gore can get rich off of us. Those photos were obviously staged by gay, unemployed hippies.

[Hal May]

11:58 AM on 10/29/2011

Haha, yea Al Gore and the 10,000 scientists world wide, its just one giant conspiracy to attain grant money from the government. Forget wall street and the big banks, scientists are the ones bankrupting this country.

[Kenz300]

12:41 AM on 10/27/2011

What a shame. All that waste and plastic can be recycled safely and turned into fuel, energy or raw material for new products. The wastefulness needs to end.

[Hal May]

12:00 PM on 10/29/2011

Tell me about it, NYC spends something like $100 million annually to haul its garbage to other states.

[mudshark12]

12:24 AM on 10/27/2011

What a ghastly mess humanity has turned the beautiful Pacific Ocean into a big garbage dump. There has to be a way to clean this up and possibly even make a money recycling the plastic/metals involved (or at least break even). We need to be more responsible or we will eventually trash the planet.

[Kitten Kramer]

04:23 AM on 10/27/2011

News Flash: "Planet Earth is already trashed. Irresponsible Congress wants to trash it more because they don't want a green planet or live animals, just working human slaves is theri cup of tea.

[Transitteer]

11:21 PM on 10/26/2011

We pollute the air drilling for oil and gas, we foul our fresh water like there's no end to it, we desecrate the land we need to grow food, and now the oceans. This vile soup shows how much damage we've done. No sayers to Climate Change should take note -- we can change the climate and are, we're drying up arable lands, and now toxifying the oceans. If we can't breathe the air, feed off the land, or drink the water, nor fish the toxic fish from the sea, then what do we do to live?? Money and V8 engines won't extend your life expectancy either. It's time to get a grip, and clean up the place we live in. We don't have another.

[Oginikwe]

01:33 AM on 10/27/2011

I wouldn't say "we." All of this is traceable back to the origins. What "we" need to do is stop buying these things. Many of us are proactive on these kinds of issues and not part of the "we" you are referring to.

[PoodleMom206]

01:11 PM on 10/27/2011

Do you drive a car, use electronics (obviously), live in a house with electricity and running water? Guess what, you are part of the "we". The problem with "utopia" is that very few of us are willing to give up our creature comforts of the modern world. That being said, we all need to do more to keep our Earth clean and healthy.