Back in 1999 Captain Charles Moore shocked the scientific world by unveiling a study showing that a large swath of the central Pacific Ocean contained discarded plastic items weighing six times more than the amount of zooplankton in that same area.

He then co-authored a second study which found that plastic outweighs zooplankton in the surface waters of Southern California by a factor of 2.5.

On Monday, Capt. Moore, a pioneer in oceanic research and advocate for clean oceans, will be at the UW Friday Harbor Labs to talk about plastics and pollution in the world’s oceans as part of a lecture entitled, “Synthetic Polymers in the Marine Environment: A Rapidly Increasing, Long Term Threat”.

The hour-long presentation begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Commons, followed by a question-and-answer period from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Hosted by the Labs, the event is co-sponsored by the San Juan Island Anti-LItter Initiative, Friends of the San Juans and Doris Estabrooks and the Friday Harbor Labs.