Water Quality in Falmouth Harbour
Falmouth Harbour consider water quality to be very important and as such we have taken steps to understand more about inner harbour water quality and taken action to ensure that there are facilities in place to help recreational boaters to dispose of sewage waste responsibly. Our initiatives are listed below with information on the most recent first.
Smart Ports, Clean Waters Project
We are currently supporting an Innovate UK funded project to use an uncrewed survey vessel (USV) every week to monitor water quality in the inner harbour and Carrick Roads, this device monitors various parameters including:
- Chlorophyll (indicating algal growth).
- Turbidity (measures water clarity and give an indication as to how deep light can travel through the water column important for photosynthesising plants i.e. seagrass and maerl).
- Phycoerythrin (indicates the presence of cyanobacteria).
- Tryptophan (which may indicate the presence of sewage in the water, more information here).
- CDOM (dissolved oxygen – low levels may indicate an algal bloom).
- PAH (which indicates the presence of oil pollution).
More information on the project is available here.
Water Clarity & Seagrass
A turbidity (measurement of water clarity) monitor has been installed close to Kiln Quay at Flushing to measure water clarity. For more information on this project, and to see the results please click on the link below.
Cleaner Seas filters
Falmouth Harbour was the first harbour globally to partner with the Cleaner Seas Group, installing their patented technology to prevent plastic microfibres from clothes washed in the marina amenity centre from entering the Ocean.
Not many people know that washing our clothes releases millions of microfibres that pollute our oceans. The Cleaner Seas’ “Indi” filter, installed in the washing machines of the Harbour’s Amenity Centre, are removing per unit per year an incredible figure of over 91 Million microfibres – these tiny plastic fibres which otherwise end up in the water and combine across the world into a huge ocean pollution problem.
Black Water Reception Facilities
We have installed black water pump out facilities on North Quay to provide boaters with the ability to empty sewage stored onboard into the land based sewage system and not into harbour waters. This does depend on whether the vessel has a holding tank on board capable of holding sewage.
To encourage use we offer this service free of charge to customers and provide toilet facilities on land at our marina for customers who do not have a storage tank onboard. Our marina and mooring terms and conditions include the requirement not to dispose of sewage into Harbour waters.
Further information on the impact sewage from vessels is available from the RYA Green Blue website.
Boat washdown
In 2019 we implemented a wash water capture system to make sure all wash water which contains high levels of heavy metals from antifoul paint is prevented from polluting harbour waters. More information on the process and how it works is provided in the link below.
All boaters should be capturing antifoul when it comes off the bottom of your boat, this includes copper coat. For more information on relevant regulations and how best to plan your bottom maintenance this information could help.
