There will be a free showing of the film: "Synthetic Sea Story" at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 15 at the University of Hawaii-Manoa Architecture Auditorium.

The event is open to the public and will be followed by a discussion with B.E.A.C.H. co-founders Dean Otsuki and Suzanne Frazer.

"The Synthetic Sea Story" is a documentary produced by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation about the threat of plastic debris in the ocean and the impact on marine life.

The film follows AMRF to the North Pacific Sub-tropical Gyre (also known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"), Hawaii and California as they sample and study plastic debris in the ocean and on beaches. 

Researchers interviewed in the film include Anthony Andrady, one of the world's leading authorities on plastic and the marine environment, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who has studied the movement of marine debris by Pacific ocean currents, and Japanese geochemist Hideshige Takada who has found that plastic in the ocean is soaking up poisons such as DDT and PCBs.

This event is part of the "Plastic and Hawaii's Marine Life" lecture/film series being presented during April by the Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii in partnership with the UH-Manoa College of Education, Department of Educational Foundations.

Other events coming up in the series: "Plastic: Impacts on our Health, Marine Life and the Environment" (Wednesday, April 22 – Earth Day) lecture by Suzanne Frazer; and "Albatross as Indicators of Plastic Pollution in the Marine Environment" (Wednesday, April 29) lecture by HPU Assistant Professor of oceanography Dr. David Hyrenbach. All events will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the UHM Architecture Auditorium.

For more further information about the series visit: www.b-e-.a-c-h.org/april09series.html.