Recommended reading: Thicker Than Water by @erica_cirino and @IslandPress. Read about her quest for solutions to the plastic crisis in her new book.
January 26, 2021 UCLA Class on Anthropocene titled “Keywords in Theory” taught by Elizabeth DeLoughrey I will join as Guest speaker.
August 19-20. Journalism Workshop on Plastic in the Ocean. This is a 2-day workshop with 25 journalists participating from newspapers, radio stations and online platforms all over the country. They will be addressing several topics related to the health of our oceans and the climate. On the 19th at 1:15pm, Captain Moore will join a panel discussion with his presentation Plastic, Plastic Everywhere: Is There a Solution to the Ocean's Most Ubiquitous Pollution?
August 6. San Clemente Island Debris Removal. Working with Aquarium of the Pacific OP divers, Jennifer Burney and Briana Fodor, we removed a derelict lobster trap at San Clemente Island. After completing our mission,we anchored off the old Avalon dump at Catalina. Much is still thrown off the cliff to the beach below. Ancient, as well as modern debris, abounds How about a beach cleanup here along with the next Avalon underwater cleanup......
May 30. Plastic Free Cayman Group Zoom Panel Discussion. and screening of “The Story of Plastic”. I was honored to be part of this lively discussion led by Laura Lee. This is a very active, energetic group. Please read the article written by her about the event .
April 15 - 20. ORV Bird Study Charter, San Clemente Island. Murreleta Research on San Clemente Island includes spotlight searches at night from the zodiac. Note homegrown bananas hanging with the lines. Lucky to be able to supply the team with fresh produce from Captain Charlie's urban garden. Changes in sea level over millennia easily visible on San Clemente Island. The lowest terrace on San Clemente dates to the last interglacial (120,000 y). The higher terraces range up to 1.5 million years, for the oldest and highest. Vivid testimony of ancient seas.
March 2. The Story of Plastic screened at The Art Theater in Long Beach to a capacity crowd of 300.
February 28 through March 1. The 10th Annual Algalita International Youth Summit was in full swing at The Ocean Institute in Dana Point. Once again, students from all over the globe were in attendance, bringing their vitality and eagerness to learn and share.
February 1. ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. With Professor Elizabeth DeLoughrey speaking on Allegories of the Anthropocene Age, the Age of Plastic. A fascinating exploration of how trash marks the Anthropocene Age, the age dominated by us humans, Focus was on the Caribbean Sea region, but I also shared videos of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13. 2019 - ALGALITA’S 25TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION.
ALGALITA'S Twenty Fifth Anniversary Gala catered by Primal Alchemy, a Zero Waste caterer, made for a great evening
Some of the folks in attendance were Tom Shadden, who presented a donation to Algalita. The funds were raised by profits from the Annual Naples Island Swim, which is sponsored Aquatic Capital of America. Others were Bill Francis, Past Board President; Cassandra Phillips, Plastic Ocean Co-Authot; Greg Shea; Matthew Shea; Mike Baker; Laura MacDonald; Bill MacDonald, Michael Bailey; Thom and Nancy Lacie; Board Member Emeritus Bill Brush and his wife Nancy; Duane Laursen, Board Member Emritus; Jeanne Gallagher, Board Member Emeritus; Sam Cannon; current Board Members Nikhil Dave and his wife and Terri Buchanan and her husband and scientissts. President of the Board, Marieta Francis, was unable to attend as were Staff Members Gwen Lattin, Research Director and Stephanie Shao.
Comments from guests included Tom Shadden. “…Charles Moore gave an inspiring speech on the past, present and future of plastic pollution prevention and education. He recognized the efforts of the current staff , board members past and present and loyal supporters of the past 25 years….” From Greg Shea…”…I sure enjoyed celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Algalita Marine Research and Education at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club this evening. Algalita Founder, Charles Moore recalled the early formative days of the organization with people like Mike Baker as well as the leaders of the future like Katie Allen, Anika Ballent and Michael Doshi…It was a great evening with great people committed to protecting our environment.”
A Silent Auction was held, including art pieces donated by Artist Thom Lacie. A wonderful panoply display of historic points in Captain Charlie’s career gave the attendees a deeper look into Charles Moore, the man. A surprise trash art piece gift for Charlie was presented by Katie Allen and Anika Ballent with Anika’s father, John, who read an accompanying poem by Jeanne Gallagher, currently Charlie’s Media Manager. Materials used were donated by Duane Laursen and Thom Lacie from local beach cleanups. Other contributions to the piece were from expeditions to “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Again, an evening to remember.
September 15. Pasadena, California.
I made a presentation to an energetic group at the book launch for Liz DeLoughrey's-Allegories of the Anthropocene…- how Islanders express themselves while being irradiated, trashed and sunk..
Lively discussions ensued and my book, Plastic Ocean, was also well received.
The event was held at the Author’s lovely home.
August 12. Chinatown, Los Angeles. Symposium presentation Made Out of WHAT - The Universal Sea. A full spectrum of outstanding speakers addressed the latest facts and potential solutions to the problems of plastic pollution. I joined the international panel of leaders that convened on Monday, August 12th, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.
June 17. Graduation Day! Certificate Awards and a visit to Captain Moore’s urban home garden. This was a wonderful day and we are proud to have been able to give these students from India the tools necessary to join The Plastic Pollution Conversation and share them with their communities.
June 10 - 17. Pilot Program for Graduate Business Students Involved in Plastic Pollution Solutions. Green Contributor, founded by George Koshy, sponsored two graduate business students who signed up for a proposed two week pilot program, two weekend days included, to learn about creation of businesses to mitigate plastic pollution. Schedule June 8. Meet the students for a boat tour. June 9 - Social gathering at the Algailta Office. June 10 - Brief overview of the Algalita operation and global plastic life cycle problem. Time with Captain Moore on the vessel to familiarize students with the research and GIS/database management. A presentation, with emphasis on interpretation of data and inference for further work to inform mitigation business decisions. Katie Allen, AMRE Executive Director and the Executive Team, illustrated the breadth and reach of AMRE plastic pollution solution efforts. Discussion of the Trash Free Seas Alliance, of which we are some of the founding members, also took place. Captain Moore and Gwen Latin gave an overview of how we began studying the North Pacific Gyre and what we have learned from the 10 voyages to monitor microplastic. Discussion of other ways of learning about displaying plastic pollution data. This was followed by a group discussion. June 11. Visited and documented plastic pollution relevant sites. June 12 and .13. Visit to Cal State Long Beach Enterprise Institute. June 14. .Leadership Session. Finalize presentations based on this experience. June 15. Exploration activities. June 16. Free Day June 17. Formal presentations and Award of Certificates.
We were very proud to be able to provide this invaluable experience for young students.
June 15. Long Beach Marine Stadium - Watch Global Water Dances Balloon Dirge performed by dance artist and environmentalist, Kanna Kai Jones, plus beautiful performances for clean water worldwide.
Kanna created Dance 4 Oceans a number of years ago, providing great dance performances at events hosted by plastic pollution eradication organizations in southern California.
June 8-10. On the 8th, i laid the 1st recycled post consumer plastic block on a Manhattan Beach Lifeguard Shack. It is a melted #3-7 plastic block. ByBlocks takes the 3-7 plastics from the optical sorter at the secondary Materials Recovery Facility-Titus in LA (the only one in the U.S) and makes 10 kilo construction blocks.
The Clean Cities Blue Ocean Project is live! Managing and Recycling Urban Waste to Prevent Ocean Plastics
June 10. CRRA Turning the Ship Around Wading Through the Plastic Seas Tour and Workshop. Captain Moore and Katie Allen made a presentation at this Workshop held in Lynwood, California.
June 9. Jade Scuba Adventures dive against debris at Alamitos Bay. Mostly single use packaging.
Congressman Alan Lowenthal, a staunch Algalita supporter and Senator Tom Udall, have written a letter to President Trump and his Administration urging them to take the lead in addressing the global crisis the plastic pollution era has created.
Please read my article published in the April issue of the official journal of the Chinese Society of Oceanography titled: "Invasion of the biosphere by synthetic polymers; What our current knowledge may mean for our future."
PRESS RELEASE. APRIL 3O, 2019. Long Beach, Ca. Important new publication “Invasion of the Biosphere by Synthetic Polymers” – Captain Charles Moore by Katie Allen | May 1, 2019 |
Algalita Founder Captain Charles Moore, the man known for sparking “The Great Plastics Awakening” 20 years ago, strengthens the case for revolutionary change in a recent article published in the official journal of the Chinese Society of Oceanography: Acta Oceanologica Sinica. Titled “Invasion of the biosphere by synthetic polymers: What our current knowledge may mean for our future,” Moore’s article illuminates how plastic waste has become more than we humans, or the ecosystems that support us, can process. Peering through a speculative lens focused by the latest peer reviewed literature, Moore shows that there is no hope of cleaning vagrant plastics that quickly age and break into micro and nano-sized bits from the environment. The only hope is that mankind can learn to respect and fear plastic enough for each and every one of us to treat it with great care. But also, and this is critical, that we use what we’ve learned about plastic pollution to create political pressure that forces the rapidly expanding plastics industry to redesign products and create take-back infrastructure that makes plastic products benign. Plastic pollution has passed the point where we can return to a planet undamaged by synthetic polymers, and the alarming consequences are unfolding on a massive scale worldwide.
April 26. Hoola One Microplastic Removal Machine Arrives On Hawaii.
KAʻŪ, Hawaiʻi - The Hoola One prototype machine could be the answer to the growing microplastic problem along the island shoreline. (BIVN) – There could be a new weapon in the effort to remove microplastics from Hawaiʻi Island beaches, if a new machine works as hoped. Students at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada have invented the Hoola One, a prototype machine to remove small pieces of plastic marine debris from beaches. Video recorded by the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources shows the machine recently arrived on Hawaiʻi Island, and was already being field tested along the Kaʻū shoreline.
“We all agree on the team that this thing is so sad,” said Alexandre Savard of the Hoola One team, “because it’s a machine that shouldn’t exist, but it needs to exist clean up all the mess that’s already here today.” “So far, so good,” said Megan Lamson of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, the group that helped raise the funds to bring the machine to Hawai’i, and which continually leads volunteer cleanups long the Kaʻū shoreline. “Hoola One has arrived to the beach. We’re super blessed that it came alongside 9 of the 12 engineering students from Sherbrooke.”
“It’s not working quite as well as they had hoped,” Lamson noted, but “that’s to be expected, a couple little fixes to get the vacuum perfect and then we’re good to go.” “We hope that once it’s field tested here in Waiohinu, and we removed microplastics at Kamilo,” Lamsen said, “that it can travel to Maui” and other islands to help clean the beaches. Lamsen says they’ve tried everything to remove the microplastics from the beach sand, from sifting trays to flotation, and she said “this is hands down where we’re throwing all of our eggs in the basket. We really, really hope this works, it’s gonna be a lot more efficient.”
Savard said he became obsessed with the idea of removing microplastics from the shore after watching documentaries on the subject, and then he found out about Kamilo beach, “which was renowned to be one of the most polluted” beach on the planet. “If we can clean this beach,” Savard said, “we can clean any beach in the world.” Lamsen said the microplastoc problem is a problem that is created by man. “We can’t point the finger and blame any one country, we can’t point a finger and blame any one industry. We all got into this problem and it’s going to take each and every one of us to get out of it.”
The Will J. Reid Foundation recently made a contribution to this project..
April 27. Algalita’s Experienceship Team that is analyzing our South Pacific Gyre samples at Cal State University at Long Beach, joined me on board the O.R.V. Alguita to take some sediment grabs and do some surface trawls in local Long Beach waters.
April 17. Spectrum 1 News. A live interview with Captain Charles Moore by Parker Collins “WAVES OF CHANGE”. Long Beach Researchers Pioneering Microplastic Research. - The work is incredibly time consuming. Researchers with the Long Beach-based nonprofit Algalita pull every tiny piece of plastic out of Pacific water samples. This helps them calculate how polluted the water is. Some recent work says there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans. Most are considered microplastics, meaning smaller than 5 millimeters.
Anika Ballent is from Long Beach and one of only four full-time employees at Algalita. It's thinking about the next generation that keeps her going. “It’s just inspiring, especially the youth. Young people, even young kids, that are taking this to heart and taking it seriously, and that’s really what inspires me to keep going every day,” said Ballent.
All of the Pacific water samples are collected from one catamaran. Captain Charles Moore designed the boat and has been leading month-long expeditions on it for two and a half decades. Captain Moore has lived in the same house overlooking Alamitos Bay for 70 years. He’s now 71 years old. Moore is a lifelong sailor and self-described radical from the 60s. He started Algalita to study urban runoff where things like lawn chemicals and sewage end up in the sea. When he came upon huge patches of plastic out in the middle of the ocean, he switched focus.
“At first, it was shock and surprise, and really wonder, and now it’s become disgust and depression and anger at our inability to stop it,” said Moore. Now his goal is to meet politicians and get new laws on the books to stop the problem. One recent success: the polystyrene ban that passed last year in Long Beach. “This is my habitat and I need to do something to preserve it,” said Moore.
It’s a step in the right direction, but Moore says big sweeping change has to happen if we’re going to make a dent in the problem……
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