Cruise ships accused of endangering the oceans

By PAUL KELBIE

LONDON - They may no longer be the preserve of the rich and famous but the boom in luxury cruise ship holidays among a new generation of sea travellers is still costing the earth.

The great ocean-going leviathans, with their luxury restaurants, hotel-suites, shopping arcades, theatres, cinemas and casinos, catering for up to 5,000 passengers and crew present themselves as the ultimate in travel recreation.

But some conservationists claim they are really giant mobile sewage farms pumping millions of gallons of untreated and chemical saturated waste into the world's oceans.

Now the industry which carries more than 10 million passengers through some of the world's beautiful and sensitive eco-systems every year is facing tighter pollution controls. The European Union is considering imposing emissions controls on cruise liners – just as it has on Europe's motor industry.

"There is a growing problem within an expanding and largely unregulated industry," said Struan Stevenson, president of the EU fisheries committee, who is spearheading a campaign within the European parliament to force cruise companies to clean up their act.

The 16 largest cruise ship companies alone plan to bring into service at least 49 new ships over the next two years.

"We send a great many cruise ships from Europe all over the world where the eco-system is extremely fragile and these ships, which are multiplying annually, need to regulated in the way they discharge sewage and other pollutants," said Mr Stevenson.

"We're doing all sort of things to regulate the survival of major fish species around the world but yet seem content to allow cruise liners to dump raw sewage and other chemicals into the sea.

"There is dioxin pollution right round the European Union, even Spanish sardines are affected. It's affecting the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean, the Irish Sea, the North Sea and the Baltic.

It may be caused by a number of factors but we have got to look at every possible source of pollution and cruise ships appear to be an unregulated area and one we shouldn't ignore."

From the frozen wastes of Antarctica to the sun-boiled beaches of the Caribbean, previously remote and unspoiled environments are under pressure from hundreds of cruise ships, the largest of which, at 310 metres, is loner than the US Navy's largest aircraft carrier.

A US-based environmental pressure group, the Ocean Conservancy, has calculated that on average each of these giant ships can generate daily up to 37,000 gallons of oily bilge water; 30,000 gallons of sewage; 255,000 gallons of non-sewage waste-water from laundries, baths and galleys; 15 gallons of toxic chemicals from photo processing, dry cleaning and paints; tens of thousands of gallons of ballast water bearing pathogens and invasive species from foreign ports; seven tons of garbage and solid waste; and air pollution from diesel engines equivalent to thousands of vehicles.

"Ships, which are nothing less than floating cities carrying between 3,000 and 5,000 people, do not have to follow nearly the same rigorous pollution standards that a land-based community would," said Kaitlin Gaffney of the Ocean Conservancy.

"Acidic discharges can badly affect organisms while oily bilge water is a threat to sea birds and marine animals which are very sensitive to oil pollution in even very small concentrations.

"The tropical routes, such as Key West, Florida and the Caribbean are all seeing a phenomenal increase in cruise ship activity which is causing a lot of concern about damage to coral and marine life.

"We are also very concerned about the Antarctic where the habitat is so sensitive and the kind of problems we are seeing elsewhere are being amplified in an area such as that."

An increasing number of cruise ships are including visits to Antarctica as part of their itineraries despite the ships not being strengthened for ice.

By 2006 it is estimated that at least 26,000 tourists will visit the area annually, congregating at only a handful of sites where the plants, seals and penguins cling to the 2 per cent of the land that is ice-free during the still-chilly summer. Some penguin colonies already get up to three visits in a 24-hour period.

However the International Council of Cruise Lines claims there is evidence that cruise ships have little impact on the environment due to the fact that any waste-water discharged is quickly diluted in the sea to such an extent to be no threat to marine life.

"Studies have shown that discharges from cruise ships moving between 9.1 and 17.4 knots are diluted by a factor between 200,000:1 and 640,000:1," said an ICCL spokesman.

"The higher the dilution rates, the less negative impact on the water quality.

"Study results have shown that at a dilution rate of 200:1, waste water has essentially no impact on marine animal species."

It was a view shared by the Passenger Shipping Association, which represent the UK cruise industry, which claims that any European legislation would be unnecessary.

"Our industry, in terms of pollution, is pretty heavily controlled already and most cruise liners are ahead of any possible legislation," said a spokeswoman.

- INDEPENDENT