Cruise Ships and Ocean Pollution: The Hidden Impact of Scrubber Technology

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There is a large community out there that loves to go on cruise ships,

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right? You see it all the time. You see people are like, this is the best thing

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ever. I can get on a boat. I can hop from place to place to place, whether it

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be in the Caribbean, in the Antarctic, in the Arctic. And

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they get on these massive, massive boats, which are cities, floating

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cities, essentially. And they get on these boats. They eat all they want.

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They drink whatever they want. They have a great time. They see. the

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sites, they see different islands, they see different places in

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different cities, whether they're in Europe or the Caribbean or Alaska.

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But what we don't really see is some of the pollution that

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happens in the water. And this is what we're going to be talking about

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today because there's a new study that talks about scrubbers over on

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the west coast of Canada and the US that

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is emitting a lot of toxic chemicals and pollution. into

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the ocean. Now it's not going to change the entire ocean or the entire Pacific

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Ocean, but it's going to definitely affect communities over the long run as there

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are more and more Alaskan cruise ships that are going up to

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view the beautiful nature of Alaska. So we're going to talk about that on

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today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show.

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Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with

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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for

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a better ocean by taking action. I am here as

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a resource to you. My entire company is built based on

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being a resource for you. And you can get more information at speakupforblue.com. And

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if you want stuff to get access to you, or get to

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slash newsletter, and you can get news, you

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can get jobs, job advertisements, you can

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get our latest videos and our latest podcasts sent to your inbox Monday to

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Friday. All right, let's get into the show. Look,

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cruise ships. Cruise ships are a thing. Like, it is huge, right?

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We've seen cruise ships, just that whole community, uh, you

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know, for the good and the bad. I mean, over the pandemic, it was bad. You know,

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things, you know, it's, it's a floating city. So things get

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through this city pretty quickly just because everybody's in such tight quarters. But

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these are floating cities. I've, I've been on one cruise ship in my entire life.

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Probably the last time I'll go on that cruise ship, but it's an interesting Situation

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you you board this this massive ship, you know, the one that I

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went out with like 5,000 people You start off usually in

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like say a place like Florida and then you go on and you go travel

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to the different places Within like the islands, right?

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So I think I went to Honduras we went to a place in

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Mexico and then we went to the Bahamas then we came home and But during that time

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you are floating on the water and you are just enjoying the ocean and

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sometimes there's like nothing around but your ship. There's nothing on

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the horizon, it's just water. And it's pretty cool to see. However,

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the things that you don't see is you don't see the pollution that

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is caused by these ships. And certain areas have specific

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regulations that they can only allow ships with specific technology

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that's on those boats that say, hey, you can't pollute or you can't do

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certain things. Now, you've got to remember, if anybody has been to an

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island where these cruise ships frequent, you're

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going to see this massive pier that gets built up. That is a disturbance to

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all that ecological sort of communities that are along there, all the habitats

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and stuff. I've had people on the podcast a number of years ago talk

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about what's happening in Mexico with these large piers that

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are built to accommodate these cruise ships and the destruction that

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they cause and the problems that they cause in terms of potential

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grounding or coral reefs and so forth. But

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there are regulations that have been set forth even with like discarding garbage and

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how to where they need to discard garbage. Like certain islands just

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can't take it anymore. There's a lot of things that go on within cruise

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ships, good and bad. Like I don't judge anybody who

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takes a cruise ship. I understand why they take it. But what we have

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to do, and we'll talk about this towards the end of the episodes, we have to really

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think about and do our research on which cruise ships are

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the best. Just because the biggest and the newest doesn't mean it's the

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best for the environment. A lot of the times, when you go on a cruise

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ship, you are going to look at the environment. You're going to look at

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the water, you're going to different Caribbean or island communities

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or the Antarctic or the Arctic, and you're going to see something that you

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probably won't see every day, let's be honest here, and you have to get there by ship.

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And they're wonderful things, it's nature-based. And so what you want to

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do is when you do things that are nature-based, you want to be aware

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of how you are affecting the nature. I went to

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a conference in Malaysia a number of years ago, great conference,

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it was wonderful. And I talked to a couple people like, oh, are you going diving? Because

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they had their diving certificate. And they said, no, we don't really go diving because we travel

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a lot and we don't want to put in too much of a footprint on

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there. Now, there are some people who did go diving and others who didn't, but I get

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it, right? When we travel, when we do something, we want to make sure that we have

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the smallest imprint footprint on that community

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and in a positive way if we do it not in a negative way right

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so there's a lot of things that you have to consider when you are taking

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these shifts and we'll talk a little bit more about it uh in the towards the

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end of the episode because there's a resource that i have from this website where i got it called

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the cool down where i got this article they were talking about

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what's happening with these cruise

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ships that are going to Alaska. And a detailed report that

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was put out by Alaska Public Media has said, many cruise

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ships use a technology called scrubbers to clean their exhaust.

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These systems flush out harmful chemicals from ship pollution, but

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there's a catch. That pollution is dumped directly into

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the sea. So they filter out that from the emissions, but

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then it gets dumped into the sea. So it's not really taken care of.

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It's just displaced in a different way. So, for example, in

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June, an inspector in Ketchikan, Alaska

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spotted a cloudy discharge creating a shimmery film on

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the water's surface. It's not an isolated incident. Most

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cruise ships visiting Alaska now use these open-loop scrubbers discharging

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millions of gallons of polluted wastewater daily. on average,

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according to the report that is linked in this article, which

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I'll link in the show notes or in the description, depending on where you're watching this

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on YouTube, or if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app.

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This is one of these hidden problems of the

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cruise ship industry. something we don't normally see you

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may see it if you are on you know top side on

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the on the cruise ship and you're looking out the window or you're looking across like

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past the stern you may or may not see this shimmery kind of

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filter um or or shine on this on the ocean

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surface and you kind of wonder like this is a massive cruise ship

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it's gonna emit some things and to be able to make

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sure it it's diluted That's key right the

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the old I was actually talking to some friends of mine last night. We

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were out to dinner And I mentioned, I said, the

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engineering motto for a lot of people is the solution to pollution is

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dilution. So the fact is, if you're discharging chemicals into

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the ocean or discharging wastewater into an ocean, you would

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think that it would just get diluted pretty quickly. But there is a

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carrying capacity of this ocean, meaning that the ocean can

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only take so much before changes start to happen or before it

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starts to get to the wrong area. These cruise ships don't always go

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out to just in the offshore where you can't see land. A

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lot of times these cruise ships are traveling up the coastline. Water

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comes in towards the coastline. So there could be chances where

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this pollution gets to coastal communities and coastal habitats,

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destroying those habitats. If these cruise ships increase their time or

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the amount of times that they're in these areas and these scrubbers are

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continuing to discharge this waste water and

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these pollutants that over time these habitats are not

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going to be able to buffer or be resilient against fighting

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this these chemicals. And so they're going to change over

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time. And by the time they change, it's going to be too late. Then we get into restoration

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practices or even identifying. And this is, this happens all the

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time. We start to see a problem. We're like, Hey, we need to fix this. And

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then the companies are like, you know what? We don't really need to fix this because it's going

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to cost us a lot of money and we're not seeing any kind of damages. So

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we'll do studies and we'll show that there's no damages and we'll just continue to

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do this. And they'll continue and continue. And they might even increase the amount

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of boats that go or the frequency of boats that go past these specific communities

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and then eventually what's going to happen is the amount of chemicals are going to

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go the habitats aren't going to be able to buffer against it that's going

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to flip into a bad scenario where you'll start to see algal

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growth or you'll start to see you know these these filter feeding organisms

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like oyster spots, or mussels, or these corals,

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or whatever is on these coastlines. And there's deep sea corals

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and sponges that are along the west coast of Canada

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and the US, where these ships go along. And you're going to

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start to see a change in those communities. And then you're going to start to

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see a decrease in the amount of animals that are around those communities. the

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communities are going to just basically just disappear slowly.

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And then by that time, by the time we identify it, then we have to go to the government and

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say, hey, you know what? This isn't actually a good idea. We've told

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you this before, but they said there was no changes. Now we're starting to see changes. And

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then by the time it goes towards doing action,

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the community is already in disrepair and it's very difficult to get them back

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to a healthy spot. Then you're spending more and more money on restoration. You're

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trying to get the companies to pay for that. But then the company's like, you

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know what? We're not going to travel around that way. We'll find a different way and

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we're not going to do it. Then you have to sue them. And it's just a whole thing. This

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happens all the time, like all the time. And

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we wanted to stop that right from the get-go. So there are

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technologies out there that can have scrubbers that are

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better, right? In specific areas, even

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within the US and across the world, they have

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banned scrubber discharges. So for instance, some nations like Sweden and

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Denmark have banned it. California requires ships to use cleaner

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fuel, burning fuel along its coast, and dozens of environmental groups

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are calling for the US Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, to

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implement a nationwide ban on scrubbers. That will

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stop this action from happening, and then we don't

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have to worry about it. The cruise ship industry will be

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able to figure out different ways, and using technology to figure out different

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ways of getting rid of these chemicals, but we won't have to worry about

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them being in the waters along the coastline. The coastline are

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those beautiful places that we like to travel to wherever you

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are along North America or anywhere in the world that we take pictures

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of and that we remember and we put, you know, we get paintings of

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coastlines and the people who live around them and we just love them and

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God forbid those beautiful pristine coastlines are

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looking like green and smelly and they don't give you

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that beautiful scenery that we love to see and that we have that blue

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mind for. We can save those just

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by taking away scrubbers, right? Just banning

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scrubbers, that would be great. Now, I mentioned the EPA would

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be in charge of banning these scrubbers and making the travel industry,

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the cruise ship industry responsible for taking away those. But

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let's be honest, the EPA, the US EPA is

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in the targets of the Republican Party. Last

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time the Republican Party was in president and had more power, they really,

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I guess, decreased the amount of power the EPA had. They took away a

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lot of the regulations in the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. So

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people who are from the US, which is a lot of the audience members in

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here, This is where you talk about getting people to vote

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for better structure, better environmental

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practices from politicians who are going into power. And I'm talking about

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this now because there is an election in about 15 days,

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maybe a little bit more. A major U.S. election for the

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next presidency, plus a lot of governorships, a lot of Senate, there's some Senate races,

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there's some Congress, congressional races, and you need

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to make that decision on what party is going to actually put

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forward and say, hey, you know what? We need

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to protect the departments, like

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the US EPA, NOAA, all

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those departments that protect our environment and ensure that cruise

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ships, as well as other industries, follow the regulations and

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adhere to the regulations so that they are protecting the American people.

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They are protecting their oceans. They are protecting our oceans here in Canada

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that get affected by cruise ships going up to Alaska. We're

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all in together and we need to take more pride in our coastlines to

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make sure that they are okay because they are not okay in a lot of places and

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we need to make sure that we do that. We love coastlines. We love seeing blue. We

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love seeing that difference, that change from land to water. That

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is the place where we see the most. especially when we go on vacation. That's

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what we want to see. No matter if you're in the Caribbean, if you're in North America, if you're in Europe,

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we want to go down to the coastline and be able to view the

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beautiful change of scenery and see that coastline. It's magical and

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it's something that we need to protect and have more pride in in ourselves. For

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Canada, it is the largest coastline in the world. And

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I'm damn proud to have that in my country. And I know that's

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something that I take pride in to make sure that that is okay.

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But other things you can do as individual travelers, you can make a difference as

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well. According to this article, when

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you're planning your next vacation, consider the eco-friendly alternatives to

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large cruise ships. Look for smaller, more sustainable tour

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operators. Some of those are very based on education. You get more out

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of the trip as well. And they prioritize environmental protection.

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So if you choose a cruise, research the company's environmental

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practices. They should have it on their website or go to

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reviews or so forth. And opt for those that have the best track

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record. Look for something that hasn't been in the court for environmental practices

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that are not good for the oceans. That's really what you're looking for.

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And so by making more informed decisions, supporting a sustainable and responsible tourism,

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we can send a clear message to those companies who are not adhering

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to these practices and be like, hey, you know what? We need to do better.

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You need to do better if you want us to pay for your services. and enjoy

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your cruises. with

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my family and we were part of a small tour group and the guy that was really

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into preserving, we went to the Colosseum, we went to all these different tourist

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spots with these, you know, these structures that are like thousands

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of years old and we learned

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a lot because he knew he had the degrees in

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ancient Roman history and ancient Egyptian history. And he

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talked a lot about the different histories, the good and the bad. And we learned so,

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so much. And it was a smaller tour, but I found it was

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the better tour because I got the most out of it. We could ask more questions and

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we can get more involved in local areas that we

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were in and sort of the structures. And you can do the same thing with cruise ships, smaller

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cruise ships, because they know they interact more with a lot of the smaller venues,

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a lot of the smaller vendors that are along the stops

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at where they stop, and you can get more out of your trip. So

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consider using these smaller places when you do so,

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because that is gonna be really special, and

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it's gonna make your trip a lot better. So there's a lot

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of benefits to looking at not using these larger cruise ships

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to have your trip, to have your next trip. So I

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highly recommend that, but I'd love to hear what you do when you go on your vacation. I

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wanna hear how you look at, and do you look at environmental practices? Are

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you going to start looking at environmental practices? That's something that you can do

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any day and any time. So I'd love to hear from you. Just

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go and put your comments in the comment section in YouTube. Or

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you can just comment on Spotify if you're listening from Spotify.

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Or you can send me a DM at HowToProtectTheOcean. That's at

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HowToProtectTheOcean. Thank you so much for joining me on

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today's episode of the How To Protect The Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Ange Lu, and