Educational and Cultural Series for the Inland Empire

A third generation resident of Long Beach, California, Captain Charles Moore grew up in and on the Pacific Ocean. His father was an industrial chemist and avid sailor who took young Charles and his siblings sailing to remote destinations from Guadalupe Island to Hawaii. Charles attended the University of California at San Diego where he majored in chemistry and Spanish.

After 25 years running a woodworking and finishing business, Charles founded Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994. In 1995 he launched his purpose-designed, aluminum-hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania, and organized the Australian government's first "Coastcare" research voyage to document anthropogenic contamination of Australia's east coast. Upon his return to California, he became a coordinator of the State Water Resources Control Board's Volunteer Water Monitoring Steering Committee, and developed chemical and bacterial monitoring methods for the Surfrider Foundation's "Blue Water Task Force." As a member of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project's Bight '98 steering committee, he realized the need for and provided a research vessel so that Mexican researchers from Baja California could participate for the first time in assessing the entire Southern California Bight.

Oceanographic research vessel Alguita and its Captain found their true calling after a 1997 yacht race to Hawaii. On his return voyage, Captain Moore veered from the usual sea route and saw an ocean he had never known, "There were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic." Ever since, Captain Moore has dedicated his time and resources to understanding and remediating the ocean's plastic load. Along with collaborators from the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project he developed protocols for monitoring marine and beach micro-plastics which are now used from the remote beaches of Polynesia to the United Nations Environmental Programme in Europe. He is also the lead author of two scientific papers published in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Willie Smits is a respected conservationist and educator devoted to preserving habitat for orangutans. His dedication to the primates led Smits to establish Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS). This remarkable group has international chapters and operates the largest "shelters" and orangutan rehabilitation areas in the world. In addition, he has focused on addressing the root social causes of orangutan habitat loss, giving local workers alternatives to short-term forest exploitation. To learn more about Smits' orangutan conservation efforts, visit Orangutan Outreach and TED.

In 2007, his Masarang Foundation opened a palm-sugar factory that uses geo-thermal energy to process the daily tapped sugar palm juice of thousands of traditional palm tappers into sugar and ethanol, providing cash and power to the community—moving toward a better future for the people, forest, and native orangutans, while saving 200,000 trees per year from being cut down as fuel wood.

"My lifelong goal is to save as much as possible from our global environment for future generations by providing real-life examples of harmonious living in balance with nature. I also believe that we cannot save the environment if we do not simultaneously take care of the people’s needs."