A French-American plastic pollution campaigner has given up his attempt to swim across the Pacific ocean after a storm broke the mainsail of his support ship, organisers have said.

Ben Lecomte had completed about 2,780km (1,500 nautical miles) of the 9,260km (5,000-nautical mile) journey. The trip was to take him through 1,600km of the “Great Pacific garbage patch”, in an attempt to raise awareness of plastic pollution.

Lecomte and his support team intended to sample the water they swam through every day, and gauge the level of plastic and microplastic pollution.

The 51-year-old called the premature end to the swim a deep disappointment. “We’ve faced treacherous winds, rain and ocean swells that have forced us to alter our course, and the irreparable damage to the sail is an insurmountable blow,” he said in a news release.

Monday’s announcement was made by Seeker, a San Francisco-based online science publisher that partnered with Lecomte and has been documenting his attempt.

Lecomte has previously swum across the Atlantic Ocean in 1998, left the shores of Choshi in Japan on Tuesday morning, heading east.

Lecomte, of Austin, Texas, set out on 5 June from Japan’s Pacific coast and was swimming an average of eight hours a day. Violent storms had already forced him to interrupt the swim after 500 nautical miles and return to Japan in late July. The mainsail broke on 10 November.

The damaged ship and Lecomte are slowly making their way to Hawaii. They are collecting data on plastic pollution in the ocean, one of the scientific aims of the swim.

Associated Press contributed to this report

• This article was amended on 28 November 2018. An earlier version gave Lecomte’s age as 50. He is 51.