Capt. Charles Moore, founder of Algalita, a non-profit marine research and education organization, has spent 20 years raising awareness about the problems associated with the excessive use of plastic.
Several students and faculty gathered at the Hall of Science Room 100 on Thursday to hear Moore present his research on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, one of five ocean gyres, or a large system of rotating ocean currents that has formed a floating island of plastics, chemical sludge and other debris in the Pacific Ocean.
Moore, a Long Beach native, and his research team traveled to the five gyres of the world to collect samples and found billions of tiny plastic particles in the water. Moore said he also found that the problem was neither worse nor better in any one region but rather an overall mess.
“[This] is not a First world problem or a Third world problem,” he said. “It’s just too much crap … [we are creating] a new world out there made of trash.”
According to Moore’s presentation, there are people who are not only swimming in the filth but are ingesting it as well.
Moore and his team also studied sea creatures from the region and found that up to 62 percent of crustaceans had high levels of plastic within their digestive system.
“There is more plastic than food in these fish … your food will be eating this [plastic],” he said.
Further research found that plastic ingested by Velella Velella jellyfish stays in their system and is even fused into their DNA.
“We are creating plastic jellyfish with our trash,” he said.
Other creatures, such as the Laysan albatross bird, are also being affected by the plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean.
Moore, who refers to the Laysan albatross bird as the “poster child of plastic eating,” said upon examining the stomach contents of one of these birds that they found plastics, such as lighters and bottle caps.
Moore said he believes that plastic acts as both predator and prey to these animals. Many animals ingest plastic as if it is a regular part of their diet, but in reality this product can shorten their life expectancy.
After 1939, plastic became a common household good in the United States after housewives were encouraged to use plastic goods because of its disposable nature, Moore said. The popularity of plastic created and maintained the American “throw-away lifestyle.”
There are several different types of plastic and properly sorting them for recycling requires resources that are not available, Moore said.
In order to properly dispose of plastic material, Moore said, it must boil at the same temperature that water does. This process, however, doesn’t always get rid of all the plastic particles left behind.
The solution to this problem, he said, is to limit the use of chemical exposure and to search for alternative methods of recycling.