Charles Moore

Since discovering the accumulation of garbage in the North Pacific subtropical gyre in 1997, Moore in his 50-foot catamaran, Alguita, has traveled more than 40,000 miles in the Pacific Ocean, across 22 degrees of latitude and 70 degrees of longitude conducting ocean and coastal sampling for plastic fragments. Employing a manta trawl net system, which is capable of trapping particles less than a millimeter in size, he collects the debris and plankton, separates them from each other, and studies the effects of plastic on marine life. Moore published Plastic Ocean in 2011.