On a sailing voyage across the Pacific in 1997, explorer, sailor and ocean advocate Captain Charles Moore accidentally stumbled upon an enormous swirling bundle of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas floating at sea. Since the discovery, Moore has been tracking the scope and implications of plastic contamination on the marine food chain, logging more than 100,000 miles aboard his research vessel. Moore is in Maine to give a lecture at the Maine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill, and this morning sat down with Anne Mostue at our Bangor studio for an interview.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, consists of an estimated 10 million tons of plastic floating 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii. Heavy currents and winds keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool. Captain Charles Moore, a native of Southern California, navigates through the giant floating debris field in his 50-foot catamaran.

Moore will speak at the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill on Friday night at 7.