Assessing the Environmental Impact of Anchoring Cruise Liners in Falmouth Bay

Sarah Tuck, John Dinwoodie, Harriet Knowles and James Benhin
Additional contact information
Sarah Tuck: University of Plymouth
John Dinwoodie: University of Plymouth
Harriet Knowles: University of Plymouth
James Benhin: University of Plymouth

Chapter 6.0 in Cruise Sector Challenges, 2011, pp 93-106 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Ports are coming under increasing pressure to manage their operations in an environmentally sustainable manner. This pressure comes from legal requirements, national agencies, planning inquiries and local activists (Wooldridge et al 1999). Ports have tended to react to such demands by making environmental policies and audits, always playing catch-up to the latest problem. An alternative approach is to be pro-active in seeking out environmental concerns at an early stage, assessing the scientific evidence of harm in the context of the specific port, and taking mitigating action according to the evidence. This is the basis of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University of Plymouth and Falmouth Harbour Commissioners (FHC), who run a small trust port in South West England. The Port of Falmouth enjoys over thirty cruise calls a year. Smaller cruise liners can berth within the docks, but larger ships must anchor in Falmouth Bay, a Marine Special Area of Conservation, and tender their passengers ashore. Anchoring directly affects the benthic habitat through smothering, abrasion and disturbance. The noise and visual intrusion of vessels create an indirect impact. Studies into anchoring activities in fragile habitats such as eelgrass beds have led to the strict management of anchoring (Milazzo et al 2002). Falmouth Bay has a rare dead maerl habitat. This paper presents the on-going study, which is assessing the potential environmental impacts of anchoring in the Falmouth bay area. The steps include synthesising existing data on the nature of the seabed, recording actual anchor locations within the bay to identify areas of high anchoring density and identifying the threat that anchoring poses to the species in the maerl habitat. It is know that there are bivalves that live below the surface, so comparative core samples will be air lifted from high and low anchoring density areas.

Keywords: Burial Depth; Mooring Line; Automatic Identification System; Gross Tonnage; Anchor Chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-8349-6871-5_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783834968715

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-8349-6871-5_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().