Charles J. Moore

http://www.algalita.org/about-us/bios/charles.html

Charles J. Moore a resident of Long Beach, California, Captain Charles Moore grew up in and on the Pacific Ocean. His father was an industrial chemist. Charles attended the University of California at San Diego where he studied chemistry and Spanish.Captain Moore has conducted ocean and coastal sampling for plastic fragments through more than 40,000 miles of the North Pacific Ocean, across 22 degrees of latitude and 70 degrees of longitude. His latest 10,000 mile voyage took him and his crew two-thirds of the way to Japan across the International Dateline. Captain Moore's work has been highlighted in numerous major media outlets, including ABC’s Night line, Good Morning America, National Public Radio, Rolling Stone, and The Wall Street Journal.

In 1997, while returning to southern California after finishing the Los Angeles to Hawaii Transpac sailing race, he and his crew caught sight of trash floating in the North Pacific Gyre, one of the most remote regions of the ocean. He wrote articles about the extent of this garbage, and the effects on sea life, which attracted significant attention in the media.