The fate of the Costa Concordia cruise liner highlights the wider impact of the cruise industry. Leo Hickman, with your help, investigates. Get in touch below the line, email your views to leo.hickman@guardian.co.uk or tweet @leohickman
Now that the search-and-rescue teams trying to find survivors in the wreck of the Costa Concordia have signalled that the operation is moving into the "recovery" stage, there is growing concern about the environmental impact that the half-submerged ship might have on the local coastline.
Sergio Ortelli, the mayor of the small Tuscan island of Giglio where the cruise ship grounded last Friday, said on Monday that "this is an ecological timebomb". The area is a well-known tourist destination where diving is a popular past-time. One diving website describes the waters off Giglio as "one of the most beautiful and fascinating" diving sites in the Mediterranean. With an estimated 2,380 tonnes of fuel on board, the race is now on to secure the ship – it is believed to have slipped on the seabed on Monday from a ledge 15-20 metres under the surface towards a far deeper channel – and prevent any fuel or other pollutants from escaping.
Booms have already been placed on the surface around the stricken ship to try to minimise the damage caused by any fuel spills and the local coastguard has already instructed Costa Crociere, the ship's owner, to remove the ship. Smit, a Dutch salvage firm, has been hired to remove the fuel from the 114,500-tonne ship and has said it will start the procedure "within days".
Agence France-Presse has more details:
A representative from US-based Titan Salvage said the [Smit] contract could run into the millions of euros.
"They've been phenomenally lucky there's been no spill. If the hole in the hull had been four or five metres further along it would have punctured the tanks," he said.
"It's very close to the edge of much deeper water," said the man, explaining that the waves could push it off its resting place and it could sink entirely.
The fuel pumped out of the ship will be replaced by water in the tanks to ensure that the ship remained stable in a practice known as "hot tapping".
[Italy's] environment Minister Corrado Clini meanwhile said that the environmental risk has been "our nightmare."
"The vessel has reservoirs full of fuel, it is a heavy diesel which could sink down to the seabed, that would be a disaster," he said.
In a worst-case scenario, the fuel could "leak into the sea, contaminating an exceptional coastline and affecting marine and bird life," he warned.
"We are ready to intervene if there is a spill," Clini said. "As soon as possible, the fuel will be removed from the vessel. But we have to take into account the precarious state of the ship."
Pier Luigi Foschi, Costa Crociere's chairman, told the media on Monday that, once the fuel was removed, the plan was to refloat the ship then tow it away for possible repairs and reuse. But, he added, if that fails then the ship would have to be cut up for scrap, a process that could take months, even years, as proved the case (admittedly, a very different scenario) with the salvage of the MSC Napoli off the Dorset coast in 2007.
Incidents such as this are exceptionally rare for the cruise industry and they each bring with them very specific environmental risks, according to the precise nature of the incident. The industry has had to deal with fires, collisions and groundings on a number of occasions over the years, but the last complete sinking of a cruise ship was in 1991 when the MTS Oceanos went down off the coast of Durban, South Africa. But the more recent tale of the MS Sea Diamond, which came to grief off the Greek island of Santorini in 2007, perhaps provides the best insight into what might become of the Costa Concordia. The wreck is still there today following squabbles about the cost of removing it
A wider question for the industry is one I spent time investigating in 2006 for my book The Final Call, which examined the environmental impact of various forms of tourism around the world: does the cruise industry have as benign an impact on the environment as it claims it does? Cruise ships, as you might expect, seek out areas of outstanding beauty – Alaska, the Caribbean, Antarctica, etc – but each of these locations host vulnerable marine habitats. What, for example, is the impact when these ships dispose of their sewage, bilge water and other associated waste materials into those waters?
The industry is meant to adhere to the rules set down by the MARPOL convention, which prevents any kind of dumping within three nautical miles of a coastline. But the US authorities, in particular, have prosecuted and fined cruise companies for illegally discharging waste into its waters. And there has long been an attempt to get the Clean Cruise Ship Act through Congress, which would prohibit the dumping of "sewage sludge, incinerator ash, and hazardous waste" within 200 nautical miles of the US coastline.
And what of the air pollution emitted by cruise ships? MARPOL sets limits on sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from ships, but the campaign group Oceana, which has long tried to highlight the environmental damage caused by the cruise industry, claims (pdf) that "the average cruise ship with 3,000 passengers and crew generates and air pollutants equivalent to 12,000 automobiles every day".
But what are your own thoughts, experiences and conclusions? If quoting figures to support your points, please provide a link to the source. And I will also be inviting various interested parties to join the debate, too. Later on today, I will return with my own verdict.
Smit's website has a pdf (pg 4 onwards) document describing some of salvage operations it has carried out around the world in recent years.
One technique for re-floating a stricken ship is called "parbuckling". This time-lapse video shows how Smit used this technique when salvaging a ship called MV Rocknes off the Norwegian coast.
Cruise Lines International Association, the world's largest cruise association, states on its website that the industry is "committed to protecting the fragile natural environments in which we operate and we have a strong record of developing and implementing sound environment practices".
On the question of reducing air emissions, it states:
The cruise line industry has committed significant financial resources to developing and implementing new technologies that will further enhance performance. These include:
* Alternative fuel options
* Testing and applying alternative/renewable energy options (such as solar panels and onboard wind turbines)
* "Slick" hull coatings (which reduce ship drag and thus also reduce fuel usage and emissions)
* Interceptor plates (designed to "lift" the aft-body of the ship which reduces propulsion power demand and energy consumption) and "duck tails" (lengthening of the aft ship, reducing resistance, propulsion power demand, and energy consumption)
* Window coatings (which prevent the sun's heat from penetrating glass, thus reducing air conditioning needs and saving energy)
* Water use minimization (low flow showers and faucets, next generation icemakers, vacuum toilets, etc.)
On the question of wastewater, it states:
Many lines are at various stages in employing advanced wastewater purification systems (AWPS) onboard their ships. These AWPS produce an effluent that is cleaner than that discharged from most municipalities. Cruise lines have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the research, development, testing and application of these systems onboard many of our ships. Any blackwater or graywater (water from accommodation sinks and showers, laundry and galleys) discharged in U.S. waters by CLIA's oceangoing fleet is treated by an AWPS in accordance with industry protocols. Beyond U.S. waters, and anywhere else our ships sail, in accordance with CLIA's Waste Management Practices and Procedures, member cruise lines treat all blackwater through a Type II Marine Sanitation Device (approved by the U.S. Coast Guard for all vessels in U.S. ports) or an AWPS.
Tom Geoghegan has posted an analysis of "what will happen to the 450-million-euro (£372m) vessel?" on the BBC News website...
"It's possible, with small areas of damage, to prefabricate a [steel] patch and put it into place," says Dawn Gorman, editor of the magazine, International Tug & OSV.
"But whether that's possible with damage this size, we don't know."
If it could be patched up, the next step would be to pump the water out and stabilise it, a very lengthy process, says Ms Gorman.
"But there's no point pumping the water out unless the damage has been patched up, and that's a big hole.
"It may be the ship isn't salvageable and it isn't possible to right it, patch it up and send it on its way, because fundamental damage has been done."
Last month the container ship Rena broke in two near New Zealand, after constant battering by the ocean, three months after it ran aground.
That's unlikely to happen to the Costa Concordia, says Mr Lacey.
"Rena was in a very exposed position so she got smashed up, but you won't get metal fatigue in this case. There isn't a huge fetch [the length of sea over which a wind blows] so she won't start rusting any time soon."
On the question of recovering the ship for re-use, the odds seem long:
"There's every possibility that it could be salvaged but it's going to be a very tricky salvage operation," says Richard Meade of Lloyd's List, a leading daily newspaper for the maritime industry.
"I think the likelihood is that this is going to be declared a total loss."
I have just got off the phone to Mike Lacey, secretary general of the International Salvage Union, who explained more about how the salvage operation for the Costa Concordia is likely to proceed. He told me:
A series of detailed surveys will be under way already. It's clear that there has been extensive damage on the port side, but we have no idea yet what state the starboard side is in. She is laying on rocks, which will cause extensive damage.
The priority, though, is getting the diesel fuel off. It won't all be in one tank, but at least one of the tanks could be deep in the ship's "double bottom". De-fuelling is not an unusual operation. It is done frequently. They will first need to drill into the tanks and get pumps in. They will then need something to pump the fuel into, possibly local barges, but more likely a specialist ship that will be brought in for the task. But they're dealing with diesel which is not as bad [environmentally] as crude oil or heavy fuel. If any is spilled or escapes, lots of it will evaporate. Once they start, it would take several days to remove the fuel. Booms will be used to minimise the damage, but the potential use of chemical dispersants is dependent on whether Italy allows their use. Some countries have banned them.
They will be trying to work out already if it can be righted. The Herald of Free Enterprise was refloated in 1987, but that was a quarter of the size and was laying on sand. This operation will be a lot more complicated. It will be immensely difficult to stop it slipping into deeper water, if this became a possibility. Massive wires could be secured to the shore, but that would be extremely hard to do. Refloating the ship just might not be possible. They would also need to get her watertight first.