Ocean
Dumping by Cruise Liners
Cruises
are considered a vacation of a lifetime. Many people go on them to escape their
everyday normalness or to get a break from work. What if the people who go on
these dream vacations found out how much they were hurting the marine ecosystem
just by going on these “harmless” vacations? Do you think they would still want
to go on these fantasy voyages? Every day, more and more toxic chemicals are
dumped into the ocean, murdering helpless animals to save money. Cruise liners
need to clean up or get out of the ocean.
Each day, an average sized cruise ship with three thousand
people generates 30,000
gallons of sewage (Chris Hardman). Where do they put
that sewage? They put it right into the ocean, hoping they can drown the unwanted
human feces in the vast ocean depths. Most of the waste, trash, and toxic
chemicals that are put into the ocean stay there. Although, the cruise lines do
have sewage treatment plans, they are not using them. The ships dump wastewater
from laundry and sinks which contain toxic chemicals from cleaning products,
dry cleaning, and photo processing. For example, Royal Caribbean Cruise Limited
was convicted of 21 felonies for purposefully dumping all of the above and more
(Gershon Cohen). But, they were not the only ones;
many foreign ships have been guilty of “serious pollution violations.”
