Charles J. Moore : Short Biography
By jayita, Gaea News NetworkThursday, March 25, 2010
Charles J. Moore is famous for discovering an enormous stretch of floating debris, ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ in the midst of Pacific Ocean. Besides being an oceanographer and racing boat captain, he brought attention as a renowned author. His articles on ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch‘ earned him respect and honor from across the globe.
In 1997, while returning to southern California after finishing the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii Transpac sailing race, he and his crew caught the sight of trash floating in the North Pacific Gyre, one of the most remote regions of the ocean. He found the floating plastic debris twice bigger in size than the US state of Texas.
Captain Charles, resident of Long Beach, California, grew up in and on the Pacific Ocean. His father being an enthusiast sailor used to take Charles and his siblings sailing to remote destinations from Guadalupe Island to Hawaii. Charles studies Chemistry and Spanish in the University of California at San Diego.
Charles ran a woodworking business for 25 years. In 1994, he quit his business to establish Algalita Marine Research Foundation. In the very next year, he launched his purpose-designed, aluminum-hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania, to help Australian Government in organizing its first “Coastcare” research voyage to document anthropogenic (human-caused) contamination of Australia’s east coast. He also served as a coordinator of the State Water Resources Control Board’s Volunteer Water Monitoring Steering Committee in California. He developed chemical and bacterial monitoring methods for the Surfrider Foundation’s “Blue Water Task Force.”
His two scientific papers published in Marine Pollution Bulletin are :
- “A Comparison of Plastic and Plankton in the North Pacific Central Gyre”. Article by C.J. Moore, S.L. Moore, M.K. Leecaster, and S.B. Weisberg, Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Published in Marine Pollution Bulletin 42 (2001) 12971300.
- “A Comparison of Neustonic Plastic and Zooplankton Abundance in Southern California’s Coastal Waters”. Article by C.J. Moore, S.L. Moore, S.B. Weisberg, G.L. Lattin, and A.F. Zellers; Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. Published in Marine Pollution Bulletin 44 (2002) 10351038.
