We are volunteers—climate activists, scientists, students, business people, teachers, health workers, and concerned residents. We were spurred to action by the Port of Seattle’s plan to build a third cruise terminal (now canceled), further damaging an environment already showing serious effects from our global climate emergency.
We work towards a transition to a Cruise Free Salish Sea.
We educate our community about the harms of the global cruise industry.
We engage community to persuade the Port of Seattle to end their support for current cruise industry practices that cause harm to public health, and damage an environment facing a climate emergency, as well as vulnerable shoreline communities, marine life, and the cruise industry workers. We urge the Port to move expediently to refuse renewal of cruise company leases.
We are recommending the Port develop a plan to phase out its remaining cruise business as a source of Port revenue, given its many harmful impacts on the world’s oceans, air, climate and public health. In the meantime, we advocate for the strongest possible regulations, policies and restrictions on the cruise industry.
We seek to build collaborative relationships with groups representing affected tribes, neighborhoods/cities, vulnerable populations, and workers/businesses impacted by cruising. We support strengthening the local economy and helping affected workers as we transition to a healthier, greener world.
We came together in 2019 to urge cancellation of the Port of Seattle’s proposed Terminal 46 cruise ship project, thereby responding to the climate crisis and protecting the environment, marine wildlife, public health, workers’ rights, and communities affected by increased flights and overtourism in coastal communities from Seattle to Alaska. Our current focus is on updating the Port’s priorities to switch to climate-friendly and equitable industries. To that end we call on the Port to stop renewing cruise ship leases as we transition to a Cruise Free Salish Sea.
Moving forward, we are broadening our campaign to reflect the realities of the accelerating climate crisis in a pandemic world. While officials at the Port of Seattle celebrate the resumption of cruise and business as usual, we are building a long term vision of a #CruiseFreeSalishSea, with a just economic transition for workers dependent upon this toxic industry. Follow us on twitter @SeaCruiseCntrl, on Facebook, YouTube, sign up for our newsletter, and join us! We are in an all-hands-on-deck moment for Planet Earth!
Terminal 46 is in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square. It was a former cargo ship terminal. The north one-third of the 88-acre site was approved as the site for a new cruise terminal by a vote of the Port Commissioners in 2019. That project has been officially cancelled as of January 2022. The Port of Seattle is currently debating whether this will again host cargo ships, or perhaps something visionary and ecologically sustainable, such as a staging ground for offshore wind turbine development. The site, which sits on ancestral Coast Salish land, is also of historical importance to Seattle’s Asian American community as an immigration landmark.