Feces on the High Seas: What is Your Cruise Ship Dumping?

[marmar]

from TIME:



Feces on the High Seas: What is Your Cruise Ship Dumping?
Posted by Krista Mahr Thursday, November 11, 2010


Full disclosure: I don't ‘cruise.' The idea of boarding a moveable city and being forced to share every meal for a week with friendly strangers does not sound like fun to me. Add ship morgues, and the fact that U.S. ships are now required to have sexual assault forensic specialists on board, and I think we're dealing with something that looks a lot more like purgatory than a carnival.

All that said, I get it. I get that cruises are a great way for a lot of people to get around to remote parts of the world. (Mom I hope you're reading this.) And that they can be great for families, and are an affordable way to travel. Considering that over 13 million people went on a cruise last year, and that the industry contributed some $35 billion to the U.S. economy last year, I acknowledge that my personal objections are the exception. (See photos on the allure of the Oasis cruise ship)

That doesn't mean that when something like this week's Carnival debacle happens, in which reports are trickling in of passengers stuck eating Spam on the open seas, I am above feeling a little smug.

I get the same Rome-before-the-fall feeling from cruise ships that I get from walking into the vast global wares of the Whole Foods produce section: just because we can, doesn't mean we should. Some 230 of these isles flotantes are in operation today (I actually thought there would be more), and the industry is growing fast. Let's face it, massive power outages and Norovirus aside, these behemoths are not exactly poster childs for the new green economy. According to U.K.-based Climate Care, they emit nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as planes. They run on bunker fuel, the dirtiest kind, and they dump millions of gallons of treated sewage, gray water, and other pollutants into the oceans every year. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/11/11/feces-on-the-high-seas-what-is-your-cruise-ship-dumping/#ixzz155d1rjvs

[Speck Tater]

1. How many million gallons of Dolphin and whale feces and urine get put into the ocean each year?

And that's ALL untreated raw sewage.

And that doesn't even count fish and other marine critters that seem to think they have the right to crap all over our ocean. Nor does it take into account all the marine birds that fly over the ocean and indiscriminately throw their gooey, smelly droppings into the water, also untreated. It's shameful the way those animal pollute our environment. Shameful, I tell you!