Along with an ice rink and a rock-climbing wall, Royal Caribbean, a cruise line fined millions of dollars in the past few years for polluting the sea, has built state-of-the-art labs for pollution research on its new ship.
The world's No. 2 cruise company and the University of Miami started the multimillion-dollar project last month to collect data from the air and ocean as the Explorer of the Seas plies its regular route from Miami to Caribbean stops in Haiti, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. Royal Caribbean, which last year pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a record $ 18 million fine for dumping oily bilge water and chemicals into the water, has contributed "in excess of $ 3 million" to support the research project, the company said.
Researchers said the labs will collect information on sea and air temperatures, pressure, water quality and other data, helping them track pollution, forecast hurricane tracks and monitor populations of fish and other marine creatures and volumes of carbon dioxide and other gases. "This will be tremendous contribution to our global warming knowledge," said Peter Ortner, an ocean chemistry expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a partner in the project.
Environmentalists have long criticised the cruise industry as a polluter of the seas on which it depends by dumping waste water, oil-tainted bilge water and bags of trash overboard. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held a hearing in Miami to consider ways to reduce pollution from the mammoth floating hotels, which each carry thousands of passengers and generate tonnes of garbage and waste water. Miami-based Royal Caribbean paid the record $ 18 million fine last year after pleading guilty to 21 felony charges for dumping bilge water and chemicals, falsifying records and lying about it. A year earlier the company agreed to a $ 9 million fine and a court-supervised monitoring programme, and in January this year it agreed to a $ 3.5 million fine to settle a suit over the dumping of oily bilge and chemicals in Alaskan waters.
Now the company, which says it has cleaned up its procedures, will have independent scientists on one of its ships on a regular basis, monitoring the environment around it and publishing their findings on the Internet. "I personally never considered that to be a risk," said Jack Williams, president of Royal Caribbean International: "It's important that we monitor the environment." So Explorer of the Seas, 142,000 tonnes and capable of carrying 3,844 passengers and 1,176 crew took up sailing between Miami and the Caribbean ports of Labadee, Haiti; San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; and Nassau, Bahamas. In addition to its skating rink, mini-golf course, jogging and roller blading tracks, bars and boutiques, the luxury ship dedicates 100 sq metres to two labs, one for atmospheric and one for oceanic research. There are sensors on its masts to measure winds, atmospheric pressure, temperature and solar radiation and instruments on its hull to monitor water quality and marine populations.
The labs are expected to give scientists an unparalleled weekly snapshot of conditions in critical marine areas such as the Gulf Stream and Windward and Mona Passages that they cannot get from occasional and costly missions aboard research ships. Scientists expect unprecedented data on the exchange of carbon dioxide and other gases between the air and the ocean and a new picture of the Gulf Stream, an offshore river that has a big role in the ebb and flow of heat in the North Atlantic. "We don't have a regular assessment of what the stream is like, biologically, chemically, physically," Ortner said: "We have these kinds of sensors on every NOAA ship but they're not going over the same place all the time." Williams said passengers will have access to the scientific work and the researchers on the ship, although the company will not use the labs to hook customers: "Whether we draw another passenger is not a major concern."
Otis Brown, dean of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School for marine research, said the history of Royal Caribbean and the industry was considered before researchers agreed to partner with the company: "The people I was dealing with (at the company) were committed to changing. They realised there were cultural issues within the company."
Freitag, 10. November 2000