In 1994, Captain Charles Moore founded Algalita Marine Research Institute (AMRI) to provide a research platform for underfunded scientists and graduate students so that they could access areas of the ocean that are prohibitively expensive to study on other research vessels. In 1997, his mission became dramatically focused. While returning to California from Hawaii aboard his 50-foot catamaran, the
Alguita, he chose to chart a course through the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. This area of the Pacific is a system of rotating ocean currents and is normally avoided by sailors due to its light winds. In the eastern portion of the Gyre, he encountered a substantial amount of plastic scattered throughout the area. Now commonly referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it is a vast plastic soup (from the surface down through the water column) containing everything from large abandoned fishing nets (ghost nets), plastic bottles, bottle caps, toothbrushes, containers and bait boxes to miniscule particles of plastic that have been reduced by wave action and sunlight (which is photodegradation) to tiny bits. Since 1997, Captain Moore has made 8 research voyages to the Gyre aboard the ORV Alguita, resulting in a body of authoritative research, data, publications and educational programs. We are confident our research will lead the way to a new era of consciousness regarding the issue of plastic marine pollution. Part of our current research is focusing on a better understanding of the magnitude of our plastic “footprint”, including how fish ingestion of plastic affects human health.
