I had a good chuckle when I saw this article the other day...
Ocean Ranger Cruise Ship Bill Introduced In California
Environment News Service, February 24, 2008
Sacramento, CA -- Every cruise ship transiting California waters would carry an Ocean Ranger aboard to oversee wastewater discharge practices and the maintenance and operation of pollution control equipment if a bill introduced in the state Senate Friday becomes law. Senator Joe Simitian, a Democrat, introduced the bill to protect California waters from cruise ship pollution, protect cruise ship passengers from crimes on the high seas, and coordinate with Department of Homeland Security agencies to be a first line of defense against terrorism attacks in U.S. ports of call.
Read the full article here.
One has to wonder where exactly this one person is going to be found, when most can hardly find a competent engineer nowadays. You are going to sail with a guy who shadows the environmental officer, who shadows the chief, who shadows the deputy chief who is responsible of the seconds who are on watch 24hr a day. huh uh. Plus the person will be the eyes and ears of the Homeland Security dept, so of course they are gonna want to be armed to the teeth - "just in case" and will be investigating drunk quarrels among the passengers. That is an awful lot of hats to wear for one person (which of course means at least 3-4 persons will be needed for the idea to be effective)
Ultimately the person will not be an engineer and will not have a clue of what the hell is going on on board, so will have to depend on the staff to guide and to spoon feed them the required info. Which is pretty much what happens now. Sound like a terribly frustrating job to have. So of course it will not be done properly. I am not sure what exactly prompted this initiative, but it is safe to say it will end up being one big administrative clusterf%^&$ just to pander to the die hard Fox News and CNN watchers.
These elected boneheads sure know very little about life on a cruise vessel and much less about life on a ship in general.Labels: around the world, cruise ships, Regulations, seafarers, USA, west coast
