It is a sad occasion when we lose a songbird of the sea to natural causes or pollution, but for some reason this one tugged at the heartstrings.
Upon docking into the Port of Vancouver, a fin whale’s lifeless body lay wrapped around the bow of the Princess Cruise Lines’ Sapphire Princess. This is more common then you think – the underwater noise pollution projected from the ship confuses the whales making communication and navigation impossible. Tanker and large ship traffic are on the rise and so you can figure that one out for yourself. Sad…we will never truly know how many creatures of the sea will become victims of this traffic. Even more sad, the ICUN Red List has classified the fin whale as endangered as well as many other species of whales. Lovely! So we are not just poisoning them with pollution, we also plow them down with our ships.
This naturally leaves a sour taste in my mouth about cruise ships; I’m not a huge fan of them to begin with since they spew their sewage and pollution in our beautiful British Columbia coast. Canada in particular takes the brunt of this spewing given that we can’t enforce laws on a US ships. (For further read on that, check out the original article that drew attention to the issue: Cruise on down to our dumping ground).
That said, I also know that there are some cruise ship lines that go to great lengths to encourage environemental responsibility of it’s passengers. But I’m still not convinced.
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