Cruise ships’ sanitation levels, environmental precautions and technical stabilities may be worsening and threatening to cruise destinations, or they may be improving to help protect cruise destinations. Many cruise destinations, depend on cruise tourism, so this trident of dangers can either deter or aid cruise destinations’ human immunities, environments and economies. The cleanliness aboard cruise ships can be flawed to a point when passengers are plagued by highly contagious gastrointestinal illnesses. Consequently, the passengers’ interactions with cruise destinations’ locals can involve the passing of these diseases. On the other hand, it can be argued that cruise ships have actually progressed in cleansing themselves to promote more sterile regulations, which include cruise destinations’ clinical safety. Furthermore, cruise ships’ dense pollution can harm the atmosphere, marine ecosystems and humans. However, cruise ships’ greener measures conversely enhance environmental protection and lessen this widespread predicament. Finally, cruise ships’ recent malfunctions create economically-compromised emergencies and can stimulate fear among potential cruise passengers, and these cruise industries heavily depend on them. On the contrary, stability-improving plans and the rare number of these unstable occurrences may contradict such an assumption. Of all these ambivalent debates, illnesses are the most personally involved.
Level of Sanitation
Cons: Since many frequent illnesses aboard cruise ships derive from contagions, the locals who reside in cruise destinations can be at medical risk. Infections, such as enterotoxigenic “Escherichia coli” (ETEC), which causes diarrhea, and the norovirus, a causative agent of stomach inflammation, have been the most frequently reported sicknesses among cruise ships (“Outbreak Updates”). For example, on March 8, 2013, over 100 crew members and passengers on a Royal Caribbean were harmed with the norovirus (Wahba and Geller). Even though no actual or distinct indications prove that the infection spread externally, it should still be realized that these illnesses can be easily contagious through the tourists’ contact with locals. Moreover, from 2004 to 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed an average of 31 illness breakouts, which mostly included the norovirus and a few of ETEC (“Outbreak Updates”). This clearly indicates that cruise ships needed to provide more sanitary conditions. In fact, a USA Today web article reports that on February 21, 2013, the cruise ship Carnival Fascination failed a health inspection by two points, as the vessel housed “dried food waste” and a “roach nymph” close to the food and drink areas (Golden). Hypothetically, illnesses could have inflicted both passengers and tourist destinations if immediate action was not taken. Conversely, these failed health tests and illness breakouts are rare among cruise ships.
Pros: Improvements in desalinization over the years and illnesses’ evasion may prove that cruise are, on the other hand, enhancing their hygiene and that infections are not too dangerous to cruise destinations. It was previously proved that many illnesses stroke cruise ships earlier, but from 2007 to 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported lower numbers with an average of only 19 cases (“Outbreak Updates”). Thus, it may be inferred that cruise ships followed more efficient sanitary motives. In fact, a Cable News Network edition reveals that between 2007 and September 27, 2012, only five cruise ships failed the spontaneous health inspections that occur twice a year (Sperry). Hence, a pattern is visible, and it is one that might imply that people who live in cruise destinations have, more recently, a less probable chance of being sickened. Furthermore, the cruise ship information website Cruise Critic answered some frequently asked questions about the norovirus, and it was answered that passengers are generally “quarantined to their cabins to prevent spreading the illness to others” (qtd. in “Norovirus – What You”). Henceforth, the spread of the norovirus is constrained by the regulations of most cruise ships, so this assurance and the lower annual outbreaks ease the risk of locals’ suffering the infection. However, illnesses among cruise ships are not the only possible clinical dangers, for cruise ships’ polluting substances may harm the environment and organisms, including humans.
Environmental Outlook
Cons: As cruise ships contribute to air and water pollution, bodies of water, marine life, the air, and humans may all be endangered. For example, the online newspaper Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the U.S.A’s Department of Ecology fined a cruise ship for over $30,000 because the boat had dumped over 450 fuel gallons near Port Orchard, Washington (Ho). Even though no wildlife deaths occurred, some eel grass beds, salt marshes and fish of the vacationed waters could have been harmed (Ho). However, fuel is not the only possible pollutant that cruise ships expel. For example, the U.S.A’s Environmental Protection Agency lists that a cruise transporting 3,000 passengers can easily dump tons of gray water from drains, oil-containing bilge water and sewage (Salisbury). Thus, the waters and marine species of cruise destinations are variously at stake because of fuel and other fluid contaminants. Moreover, Smart Planet shows that 40% of Hong Kong’s greenhouse gases that originate from cruise ships may contribute to the annual 1,200 deaths that the country incurs because of smog (Ko). Therefore, cruises also threaten the air and human beings that tourist destinations encompass, and in this case, the victim is cruise destination Hong Kong. Thus, these facts may imply that an improvement is needed. In effect, more recently, improvements are being made to support a generally greener outlook.
Pros: It can be debated that cruise ships have improved their environmental outlook for cruise destinations. For example, as it was aforementioned that improvement was needed in 2009, in 2012, some of this improvement can be indicated. On December 7, 2012, Cruise Critic garnered that, among a few improvements, Disney Cruise Line decreased air pollution, and Alaska Cruises improved its water quality from 2009 (Saltzman). Thus, this may bring an assumption that some cruise liners took the environment into greater consideration over the years to decrease pollution among the sea and air. However, other cruises have been cognizant of pollution since 2009. On June 3, 2009, the environmentally supportive website Tree Hugger gleaned that Holland America Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Celebrity Cruise Stolstice all reduce waste by thoroughly filtering it and/or lessening any input that produces waste (Underwood). Furthermore, Holland America Cruises decrease thick emissions with the help of scrubbers and filter their bilge waters twice before dumping (Underwood). Also, Solstice separately cleans its engine oil to prevent accidental expulsion, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Explorer of the Seas houses laboratories to study water pollution (Underwood). Hence, some cruise ships had already enhanced environmental welfare, so the environments of tourist destinations were not and are not too critically afflicted by cruises. Moreover, cruise ships are not lone leaders in facilitating greener motives. In March 2013, Hong Kong’s Clean Air Network, citizens and tourists signed a petition to urge cruise ships to lower the sulfur content in their emissions by a half, and the appeal was submitted to the government for a legislative response later in the year (“Press Release”). With individualistic protocols like these and previous environmental measures from cruises, tourist destinations may not be extreme victims of pollution. On the contrary, cruise economies themselves may be fearfully dependent on cruise ships’ physical steadiness.
Economics
Cons: Cruise liners’ risky maintenance may vicariously harm cruise economies through fear and emergencies. In other words, cruise ships’ technical complications may generate fear in both cruise economies and potential cruise vacationers. For example, on January 13, 2012, the cruise ship Costa Concordia tilted, submerged and killed 32 passengers and crew members off the coast of Giglio, Italy (Nadeau). This may have frightened individuals in the Mediterranean region. In fact, six days later, The Huffington Post indicated that the global cruise promoter Cruise Lines International Association’s (CLIA’s) Director of Communication Lanie Morgenstern said that the CLIA was aware of the anxiety following the Costa Concordia incident (Burmon). Additionally, some of this nervousness has been more recent. For instance, Cable News Network briefed that on March 15, 2013, the Carnival Dream docked the Caribbean island Sint Maarten and suffered electrical complications, which restricted passengers to remain aboard the ship (Payne and Elvs). Thus, it can be assumed that Sint Maarten lost some financial contribution because the passengers were obliged to remain aboard. Furthermore, in February 2013, Cable News Network reported that an onboard fire damaged yet another Carnival cruise, the Carnival Triumph, which was pushed to Alabama (Sutton et al.). Aboard the vessel, a girl named Allie Taylor called her mother and stated, “Mommy’s it is so scary…I want to go home” (qtd. in Sutton et al.). Although most of these predicaments derived from Carnival vessels, the emergencies prevented economic input and may build some fearful mistrust among tourist destinations and potential passengers. Consequently, this fear further increases this missed economic input. Nevertheless, these controversial technical issues rarely occur over the years, and most cruise stability is actually ensured before or after any actual or potential circumstances.
Pros: Cruise ships’ technical functionalities do not largely endanger cruise economies because cruise liners learn from and prevent these rare occurrences. In fact, on April 17, 2013, Canadian news syndication National Post disclosed that Carnival Cruise Lines budgeted $300,000,000 to provide more emergency generators, enhance fire safety and develop engine rooms to its fleet of 24 ships (Harpaz). This is a cautious response to the breakdowns the company’s cruises experienced many weeks before the projected plan. Therefore, with this potential improvement and no precarious reports of other cruises, cruise ships’ stabilized and stabilizing maintenances are actually protecting cruise economies. In fact, New Scientist interviewed Mark Staunton-Lambert, technical director of ship designer Royal Institution of Naval Architects, about the passed stability tests of the Costa Concordia (Marks). Thus, realizing that the Costa Concordia incident may have been just a human error by the ship’s captain defies some hasty conclusions about the cruise ship’s stability itself. In other words, in this case, the blame cannot be laid on the ship’s physicality, for its steadiness was examined, like other cruise ships’. Hence, with recognizing a highly budgeted improvement plan of a flawed fleet and identifying stability regulations, one can conclude that ships’ technical malfunctions are prevented to protectively attract passengers and, consequently, cruise destinations. In clearer terms, less fear equals safer economies.
All in all..
Cruise ships do provide a trident of dangers, which are illnesses, pollution and cruise instability, but each prong is not as dangerous as one may assume. With enhancing the prevention and constraining the spread of the norovirus, cruise ships’ health provisions have improved, so cruise destinations’ local peoples are very minimally endangered. Also, the previous and consistent environmental vigilance of cruise ships and cruise destinations ease air and water pollutions, which only moderately threaten the global environment. Cruise vessels’ fragile stabilities do not highly decelerate the economy because the increase in stability-safety regulations retains fear and emergencies, two economically-unfriendly factors, among passengers and cruise economies. Therefore, one can easily conclude that this trident has had its prongs curtailed over time, and the trident can be considered more protective in recent years. These three dangers have been eased, and cruise ships actually do not pose an extreme hazard to cruise destinations’ human health, environments and economies.
© Copyright Nikhil B. Punjabi
The Nick of Times 