Do cruise ships use ocean water for drinking water?

Water used for drinking is usually taken from seawater undergoing a desalination process. River cruise ships have smaller water stores. Fresh water supplies are topped up during each port visit, which isn't a huge problem since their travels don't run several days between port visits.



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Most cruise ship water is desalinated sea water. The process usually involves steam evaporation -- essentially turning saltwater into distilled water. That water is then mineralized for flavor and chlorinated for extra safety. Other ships are fitted with a reverse-osmosis system for filtering and/or desalination.

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Shipboard potable water (drinking, bathing, whirlpools, etc.) either comes from a shoreside water treatment plant or is generated on board from seawater via Reverse Osmosis systems or Evaporators.

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Cruise ships make their own drinking water. It's unsurprising since they're constantly surrounded by sea water – they use either steam evaporation or reverse osmosis processes to desalinate the water before minerals and chlorine are added. It's the same as a home filtration system, only significantly larger.

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Yes. All drinking water is either distilled from seawater or loaded onboard while the ship is in port. Royal Caribbean adheres to Vessel Sanitation Program standards published by the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS).

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Shipboard potable water (drinking, bathing, whirlpools, etc.) either comes from a shoreside water treatment plant or is generated on board from seawater via Reverse Osmosis systems or Evaporators. Swimming pool water is typically seawater.

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All drinking water on a cruise ship has either been distilled from seawater or loaded on board while the ship was still in port. The U.S. Public Health Service has published Vessel Sanitation Program standards that cruise ships are expected to adhere to.

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You might be a big fan of bottled water and refuse to drink tap water, but a cruise ship's water is MUCH better than tap water. They have high-tech filtration systems that allow the water coming out of your bathroom sink to be clean and more than pure enough to drink.

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Cruise ship pools are usually filled with saltwater which has been chemically treated. On some cruise ships, you will find freshwater pools but these are less common. It is possible to have a cruise ship where some pools are fresh and some saltwater, this is very common on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.

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Cruise lines drain their swimming pools at night to discourage guests from trying to enter the pool when it is closed. Draining the swimming pools each night also allows the cruise lines to replace the water with clean water and a drained swimming pool is safer if the weather is rough.

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All of that waste is either processed via biodigesters or dehydrators, or offloaded on shore. Some of the company's ships have long had dehydrators, which squeeze the water from food waste and lighten the load that can be taken to landfills, compost sites or waste-to-energy facilities.

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Do Cruise Ships Dump Sewage? Yes. To get into a few more specifics than above, the U.S. allows cruise ships to dump treated waste into the ocean if they are within three and a half miles from shore. Beyond that point, there are no restrictions for dumping untreated, raw sewage in U.S. ocean waters.

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What Happens to Old Cruise Ships? As ships age, cruise lines have several choices, which include extensively refurbishing and relocating vessels to smaller, less popular regions; transferring or selling them to other lines; or sending them to a cruise ship junkyard for scrapping.

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Vacuum suction lines zip toilets' contents to marine sanitation farms, which siphon out the water, treat it until it's drinkable, then pump it into the ocean. Helpful aerobic bacteria digest the remaining sludge in storage tanks until it's all offloaded ashore, about once a month.

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When a toilet is flushed on a cruise ship, the sewage travels to the onboard treatment plant. Here the waste is filtered before it enters an aeration chamber. The aeration chamber cleans the waste. It is then sterilized using UV light and released into the ocean when clean enough to do so.

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Around 10% of a cruise ship is below the water. Some of the largest cruise ships in the world, Royal Caribbean's Oasis-class ships, have a height above the waterline of around 72 metres (236ft 11in), and a draft below the water of around 9.3 meters (30ft 6in).

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While water, juice, and tea are usually free on a cruise, you often have to go to the ship's restaurants to get them. Meanwhile, non-alcoholic drinks like sodas cost extra (usually around $2-3 per serving), so bringing those on with you when allowed can save you a decent amount.

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