A prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age. In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu 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 ceanic desert?where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a lastic soup.? He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one. In Plastic Ocean, Moore recounts his ominous findings and unveils the secret life and hidden proper ties of plastics. From milk jugs to polymer molecules small enough?to penetrate human skin or be unknowingly inhaled, plastic is now suspected?of contributing to a host of ailments, including?infertility, autism, thyroid?dysfunction, and some cancers. An urgent call to action, Moore's sobering revelations will be embraced by activists, concerned?parents, and anyone concerned about the deadly impact and implications of this man-made blight.