If there’s one thing Capt. Charles Moore wants you to know, it’s that the plastic floating in the ocean has an impact on you.

Moore, credited by most as the discoverer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, says that aside from harming marine animals, the petroleum-based plastics in the ocean ecosystem could have an as-yet-unknown impact on human health.

"We’re living in the plastic age but haven’t had the plastic conversation," said Moore, 64, who divides his time between Hawaii island and Long Beach, Calif. "But we desperately need to discuss where it (plastic) belongs because it’s in a lot of places it doesn’t belong."

Since he first stumbled upon the swath of plastic debris in 1997 during a voyage from Hawaii on his 50-foot catamaran, Moore has made it his life’s mission to raise awareness of the consequences of our plastic-dependent lifestyles.

His new book, "Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans" (Avery, $26), co-authored by Hawaii orchid grower Cassandra Phillips, tells the story of his encounter with this "plastic soup" and his struggle for scientific credibility.

The book goes through the history of how the United States evolved into a "throwaway society" consuming single-use plastics.

"It is an imminent danger in a lot of different ways, not only to species in the ocean, but to us as a species," said Moore.

In his book, Moore cites studies by U.S. and European universities that found correlations between higher PFC levels in blood, for instance, and human thyroid dysfunction and infertility.

Plastic is all around us, Moore said.

"We wear it, we drive in it, we get our food delivered in it, we make our children’s toys out of it."

FOR EVIDENCE of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, look no farther than Hawaii island’s Kamilo Beach or Oahu’s Kahuku Beach. These are coastlines where the ocean is "spitting out" plastic debris, according to Moore.

He carries around a pouch of "plastic sand" from Kamilo Beach to show people what it is.

On a personal level, Moore drinks from a stainless-steel container (and even replaced the plastic top with a cork) and testified in support of the ban of plastic checkout bags on Hawaii island, which became law last week and will go into effect in 2013.

His nonprofit, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, has returned at least eight times to the Pacific Garbage Patch to gather more data, with Moore at the helm. He’s also sailed to every other garbage patch on the globe.

What’s alarming, he says, is that the amount of plastic in the ocean appears to be multiplying. The ratio of pounds of plastic to plankton in 1999 was estimated at 6-to-1; Moore’s latest findings, based on 2008 and 2009 data, estimate the ratio at 36-to-1.

Though he’s not an academic, Moore considers himself "a man of science" and has pored over articles on the subject and even published a few of his own.

It’s not just Laysan albatross chicks that are dying from ingesting plastic (and subsequent starvation). Every size and class of organism has been affected, said Moore, including whales.

So why can’t we just send a big barge out to the Pacific Garbage Patch and vacuum it all up? Moore will point you to Page 308 of his book, which says, in effect, that it’s simply not practical given the sheer distance and the dispersal of plastic particles in the vast ocean.

Moore believes the best action we can take is to "stop putting any more plastic" into the ocean and make changes in what we consume and how much we consume.

We can also support local businesses that don’t have to overpackage to ship products here. He suggests requiring companies that import products to take back all the packaging material that would otherwise have to be handled by municipal solid-waste agencies.

"If they produce it, they should take it back," he said.

For more about the book, visit the website plastic­oceanthebook.com. For more about the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, visit www.algalita.org.

Read more of my interview with Moore at thegreenleaf.staradvertiser­blogs.com.

Nina Wu writes about environmental issues. Reach her at 529-4892 or nwu@staradvertiser.com.