Plastic Ocean

It happened on August 3, 1997, a lovely day. Sunny. Little wind. Water the color of sapphires. Captain Charles Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea. Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered his course, veering slightly north. This was an odd stretch of ocean, a place most boats purposely avoided.

Moore had spent countless hours in the ocean. He'd seen a lot of things out there, things that were glorious and grand; things that were ferocious and humbling. But he had never seen anything nearly as chilling as what lay ahead of him in the gyre.

It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.

How did all the plastic end up here?