surprised so many ships are moving around

[RCVoyager]

Looking at cruisemapper.com or marinetraffic.com, I'm surprised so many ships are moving around.  It's been that way since all this started, and it continues.  I thought there would be some movement for logistic reasons right at the beginning of the stoppage and then a little more at the end, and ships basically sheltering in place during the bulk of the stoppage.  Not the case at all.  Lots of ships moving around all the time.

[WAAAYTOOO]

Ships have to be under way in order to produce fresh water.  That could account for some of the movement. 

[YOLO]

1 minute ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Ships have to be under way in order to produce fresh water.  That could account for some of the movement. 

That's what I thought, but couldn't find a google reference to validate this.

[Matt]

Each ship is also taking turns coming into port to pick up provisions.

[YOLO]

Bloomberg's take on this...

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-where-are-the-cruise-ships/

[Matt]

1 minute ago, YOLO said:

Bloomberg's take on this...

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-where-are-the-cruise-ships/

I like how they put in the last paragraph the explanation of why this is, meanwhile, they wrote a clickbait article that infers regular cruise sailings are still happening.

[RCVoyager]

15 minutes ago, Matt said:

I like how they put in the last paragraph the explanation of why this is, meanwhile, they wrote a clickbait article that infers regular cruise sailings are still happening.

The media is completely out of control in pretty much every thing it does.  There is no news.  This is just another example.

I'm sure the writer of this piece would gladly accept a cruise that someone else paid for.  Of course she would return home to write another piece about the evils of cruising.  

[RCVoyager]

35 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Ships have to be under way in order to produce fresh water.  That could account for some of the movement. 

Thanks.  I didn't know that.

[JLMoran]

The other thing that I heard, I think on Cruise Radio News, is that ships are going to at least some of the crew's home countries to enable them to finally disembark, since those crew have not been able to get flights back home. They aren't always going straight to the crew members' home countries; in some cases they're doing a sort of leapfrog thing, with ship A meeting up with ship B to transfer crew by tender boat. And then a final tender transfer to the home country port if it's not big enough to accommodate a cruise ship.

[twangster]

If you ever have the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour this is often a topic addressed.  

Sea water in a port is never used or taken on board because it can be contaminated with local surface runoff containing a myriad of contaminants like fertilizer, oils and human or animal waste.  Everytime it rains all those things are picked up and carried into streams that eventually flow into the ocean.  The general wisdom is to never take on water even to fill swimming pools until a ship is X miles from land.  Often territorial boundaries are used like the 12 mile limit.

At the same time ships process wastewater.  During the behind the scene tours they explain the advanced water purifications systems and will generally make a reference to cleaning waste water to the point that it is as good or better than drinking water, not that it is used for that purpose.  When it has been purified to this degree it can safely be put into the ocean but only away from land, they can't dump anything while within territorial limits so it's always done at sea.

There may also be an immigration aspect.  Crew work visas allow them to visit briefly but they are not tourist visas that allow them to stay for longer periods of time.  By returning briefly to international water they reset any immigration limits on crew work visas.  I haven't fully researched that so it may not be a factor in play during this time. 

[RCVoyager]

15 minutes ago, twangster said:

If you ever have the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour this is often a topic addressed.  

Sea water in a port is never used or taken on board because it can be contaminated with local surface runoff containing a myriad of contaminants like fertilizer, oils and human or animal waste.  Everytime it rains all those things are picked up and carried into streams that eventually flow into the ocean.  The general wisdom is to never take on water even to fill swimming pools until a ship is X miles from land.  Often territorial boundaries are used like the 12 mile limit.

At the same time ships process wastewater.  During the behind the scene tours they explain the advanced water purifications systems and will generally make a reference to cleaning waste water to the point that it is as good or better than drinking water, not that it is used for that purpose.  When it has been purified to this degree it can safely be put into the ocean but only away from land, they can't dump anything while within territorial limits so it's always done at sea.

There may also be an immigration aspect.  Crew work visas allow them to visit briefly but they are not tourist visas that allow them to stay for longer periods of time.  By returning briefly to international water they reset any immigration limits on crew work visas.  I haven't fully researched that so it may not be a factor in play during this time. 

Thanks Twangster.  That's a lot of information that makes sense.

[GrandmaAirplane]

11 hours ago, JLMoran said:

The other thing that I heard, I think on Cruise Radio News, is that ships are going to at least some of the crew's home countries to enable them to finally disembark, since those crew have not been able to get flights back home. They aren't always going straight to the crew members' home countries; in some cases they're doing a sort of leapfrog thing, with ship A meeting up with ship B to transfer crew by tender boat. And then a final tender transfer to the home country port if it's not big enough to accommodate a cruise ship.

Correct.
For example, several ships left Sydney a few days ago, after loading supplies and shuffling crew (under police supervision.) Each of those ships is headed to different ports to return crew members to their home countries. At least a couple of the RCI-owned ships (across the brands) are currently headed to Manila.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/nsw-police-largest-maritime-operation-over-cruise-coronavirus/12122030