Some cruise companies (including Royal Caribbean) have voluntarily made the switch to slightly cleaner fuels, and/or they use scrubbers to capture some of the harmful emissions. Those pollutants cause thousands of deaths per year through respiratory ailments and asthma. Every day, a typical cruise ship emits more sulfur than 13 million cars, and more soot than a million cars. Not only does that add up to a lot of carbon emissions, but to make matters worse, cruise ships tend to rely on bottom-of-the barrel fuels, which are less expensive but more polluting. These new non-toxic coatings, however, are not yet ready for commercial use, and scientists still need to prove they’re safe and effective.ĭown in the belly of the Quantum of the Seas, while the ship was cruising at a relatively slow speed, Richard Pruitt told us that the ship was probably consuming around 2.5 tons of fuel per hour. Researchers are now working on finding ecologically safe alternatives that don’t rely on biocides and heavy metals-for example by mimicking shark skin patterns, or using molecules called zwitterions to deter bacteria from attaching to the hull. It was banned in 2008, and the safety of copper coatings has also been called into question. And no wonder, because it turned out to be toxic to marine organisms. For things like barnacles and algae, the bottom of a ship can be the perfect place to park-and their presence can create a lot of drag, increasing fuel consumption by up to 40 percent.Ĭoating ships’ hulls with a tin-based substance called tributyltin initially did an amazing job at preventing such “biofouling”. Retirees aren’t the only organisms that like to go on cruises. These hitchhikers can reduce a ship’s efficiency by up to 40 percent. A worker washes the barnacles, algae, and other marine organisms from the hull of a ship.
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