The Sierra Club Presents
Plastic Ocean & Local Marine Shoreline Health
with
Captain Charles Moore
Scientist and Activist
Discusses "The Great Infection of the Sea"
detailed in his acclaimed new book Plastic Ocean


Date: January 21, 2012
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Port of Bellingham Cruise Ship Terminal Dome Room
355 Harris Avenue
Bellingham, WA
Contact: Anne Mosness
Llyn Doremus
 

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 this presentation Moore will discuss these observations, what they mean to our planet, and his book Plastic Ocean. 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.


This event is sponsored by the Sierra Club Mount Baker Group in partnership with the Bellingham Community Food Coop, ReSources, and the Olympic Peninsula Surfrider Chapter.

Captain Moore is also speaking in Olympia, Port Angeles, Seattle, and Tacoma.