Michael Moore grew up in England, where he trained as a veterinarian. He began his career as a marine mammalogist in Newfoundland and the Caribbean. Moore then pursued his wife-to-be Hannah, back to her New England home. He spent two years acquiring U.S. veterinary licenses, before gravitating to Woods Hole in 1985, where he was first at the Marine Biological Laboratory and then at WHOI. As a WHOI/MIT Joint Program student in the laboratory of John Stegeman in the Biology Department, his research first focused on tumors in flatfish exposed to Boston Harbor sewage. His interest therein endures, but since becoming a research specialist at WHOI, it has expanded to encompass other manmade impacts on marine vertebrates such as right whales and other marine mammals. He is also the veterinarian for the International Fund for Animal Welfare Marine Mammal Rescue Research Group, which responds to single and mass strandings of marine mammals on Cape Cod.