Firstly, and very importantly, type into your search bar ‘images of cruise ships dumping effluent into ocean waters’.
This practice is happening every day and the required distance from the shoreline is only three nautical miles – that’s just the horizon you can see when you’re down on the beach.
Mixed in with the poop and urine from up to 4000 people and crew onboard is a massive amount of the chemicals that are used to clean up every day.
If you go to a sewerage treatment works you will see the same froth there.
SA is probably considered as a better place to empty holding tanks instead of off Port Phillip Bay or Sydney.
Each ship holds up to about one million litres. If there’s a small toxic algae outbreak that would probably disappear without doing any harm then it won’t affect the natural environment.
However, if these ships are dumping the nutrients that the algae is feeding off and has now become an unnatural disaster, then someone needs to expose the culprits.
What Sarah Hanson-Young is saying is that it’s because of fossil fuels heating the planet. Partly, possible but maybe not linked to the SA algae bloom.
I chose to write to this newspaper because of the connection to the coast and fishing industries.
I think most people are in the dark about the fact that these massive floating sewerage discharging ships have to empty their tanks regularly and because they are over the horizon and out of sight, then nobody is connecting them with the algae bloom.
They probably empty tanks at night.
I hope that you can see that there can be nothing good coming from the practice and the sheer number of cruise ships operating off the coast means the environment will pay a big price.
I think that it’s time that this practice was brought from out of sight and on to the front pages of a newspaper.
I hope after viewing the pictures online that it’s something that needs to be reported on, the public has a right to know what their seafood and prawns are feeding on.
Tony Tedd, Kempsey (NSW)
Teachers, not administrators
‘Aussie teachers quit on social’ (The Advertiser, August 26) provides a serious wake-up call to all Australian education departments.
Once viewed as an extremely worthwhile, enjoyable, rewarding and respected vocation, it is now being severely tarnished by the constantly changing working conditions and ever-increasing demands faced by classroom practitioners.
Each year, an increasing number of outside classroom influences of expectations, procedures and requirements are being placed on teachers at the chalk face, who just want to get on with the job of developing the skills, abilities and understandings of their students, whilst also providing them with an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Teachers are being burnt out because the amount of time focused on the essential learning of their students is being diluted because they are required to undertake a plethora of duties that have little or no direct bearing on student learning and development.
If you want administrators with an excessive desire for data, checklists, filing reports, writing curriculum and other non-teaching duties, employ them and let teachers get on with the job of teaching.
You can’t have a class, positive student learning and achievement without a teacher.
Ian Macgowan, Ceduna
Reach out this Dementia Action Week
Dementia doesn’t just impact the person living with the condition and their immediate carers – it also impacts their family, friends and wider social network.
With an estimated 433,300 Australians living with dementia and 1.7 million people involved in their care, chances are you know someone who is impacted by dementia.
People living with dementia tell us that friends and family often drop away, not knowing how to interact with them once they have a diagnosis.
That’s why this Dementia Action Week (September 15-21) we are challenging everyone in the community to reach out and reconnect to someone impacted by dementia because nobody can do it alone.
For some practical ideas about how to reconnect, visit dementia.org.au/dementiaactionweek
For support any time, please contact the National Dementia Helpline on 1800 100 500, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Merran Kelsall, Dementia Australia chairperson, and Ann Pietsch, Dementia Australia advisory committee chairperson
