Footprint like an ocean

Students marveled at electric cars on the lawn outside the Robert B. Moore Theatre on Wednesday after listening to a two-hour lecture on the dangers of the amount of plastic amassing in the Pacific Ocean.

Dubbed “Green Coast Day,” Charles Moore, a Long Beach ship captain, talked to 300 students inside the theater, explaining how the Pacific has become a depository for millions of tons of plastic due to the prevailing clockwise atmospheric currents that continually swirl around trash with no end in sight.

“It’s like a toilet that doesn’t flush,” said Moore, a former antique furniture repairman whose quest these days is to rid the ocean of debris.

And yet it’s an uphill, virtually losing battle, he told the students, adding that to truly solve the problem, consumers would either have to nearly boycott plastic, or coastal cities would have to revamp their infrastructure to prevent the flow out to sea.

Because neither solution is viable, Moore said, there’s no immediate answer, other than to spread the word that there is a crisis at hand, one that’s actually changing the ocean’s overall ecology.

Some fish, for example, are actually living in plastic containers in the middle of the sea, an artificial protector from their prey, and creating a threat to the food chain, Moore said.

And other fish, due to the digestion of too much plastic, have either become less fertile or lost their ability to reproduce.

As for sea birds, they’re suffering as well, particularly the albatross, which mistakes the plastic for food and dies from eating it.

The problem is caused at the international level. Moore showed dozens of photographs on the wall of the theater, pointing out that many of the items found in the ocean don’t just come from the United States.

He predicted that more than 100 million tons of plastic would make its way into the Pacific Ocean in the next four years, their chief routes being rivers and streams.

In concluding his presentation, he gave the audience something to think about.

“What is your plastic footprint?” he asked.

What Do You Think?

How is your family reducing its plastic consumption? Send us an e-mail at dailypilot@latimes.com or leave a comment on our website.