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A prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age.
In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu 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 proper ties 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. An urgent call to action, Moore’s sobering revelations will be embraced by activists, concerned parents, and anyone concerned about the deadly impact and implications of this man-made blight.
Firsthand account of how plastics pervade our oceans in unimaginable ways, killing marine life and causing wide-ranging environmental and health effects.
Capt. Moore, a lifelong seafarer, was spurred to activism when his catamaran stalled in a remote area of the northeast Pacific and he noticed a visible proliferation of plastic bits and other trash floating on the water's surface.Dubbed "The Great North Pacific Garbage Patch," it was an ominous indicator of thecavalier way in which humans dispose of tons of plastictrash. This initial discovery led the author on a decades-long investigation into plastic production, distribution and chemical makeup, which revealed a level of pollution--in the sea and otherwise--far more insidious than people realized. The rise of "disposable" products coupled with inexpensive mass-production processes resulted in an unprecedented number of plastic bottles, lighters, shopping bags, diapers and other detritus being thrown away each year. Too much of it winds up in the ocean, where cool saltwater drastically slows down decomposition rates. Growing numbers of vulnerable animals are ingesting these materials, and often suffering malnutrition, unhealthy offspring and death. Evidence suggests that the entire food chain may be affected, sincemillions ofmicro-plastic bits are consumed by tiny sea creatures, which are eaten by bigger fish or birds, and so on. This "toxic Trojan horse" effect extends to air and land, as well, since plastics pervade so much of our lives and often leave toxic traces behind. 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.
A Note to the Reader ix
1 A Plastic Soup 1
2 Synthetic Evolution 20
3 Surfing the Learning Curve 42
4 Swept Away: The Oceans as Global Dumpster 57
5 The Plastic Sea Around Us 75
6 The Invention of throwaway Living 93
7 Harm 109
8 The Plastic Age 126
9 Gonzo Science 152
10 The Message Finds its Medium 171
11 Net Losses 191
12 Indigestible 210
13 Bad Chemistry 240
14 Debris Forensics 269
15 Erasing Our Plastic Footprint 292
16 Refuse 319
Afterword 338
Acknowledgments 358
Sources and Resources 362
Index 367
Anonymous
Posted April 15, 2012
Is hunting
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Posted April 14, 2012
Cloudwish.... r u able to be picked up at least? If not... ur gonna die. *grabs cloudwish and brings the cat to result two*
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Overview
A prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age.
In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu 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. ...