num_pages: 368
description: A prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age and a growing global health crisis. 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 man made blight.
language: English
title: Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans
publisher: Avery