Tell me if this sounds familiar.  You’re sitting on a dock on a beautiful lake, dipping your feet in the clear water.  Loons are flying around, (we’re in New England, stay with me,) the sun is shining, and life is good.  Until you hear a cross between a jack-hammer/helicopter/buzz-saw from Hades – and it’s coming straight at you!  Nah, it’s no demon.  Worse, it’s just your neighbors on a jet ski.

So yes, jet skis are loud, annoying, and they rip apart the water like something out of a Michael Bey blockbuster.  And it’s not just your ears that are sensitive.  The whine of a jet ski produces noise levels in the range of 85-105 decibels per unit.  This means harassment for you and local wildlife. 

And according to sources, jet skis are one of the largest sources of water pollution in the United States.  Most traditional jet skis operate on a two stroke engine.  The Surfrider Organization recently reported that this engine discharges­­_­ “as much as one third of their fuel and oil unburned into the water and air, which means a two hour ride on a Personal Water Craft, dumps 2.5 gallons of gas and oil into the water.”  And at around 200,000 units a year, jet skis now account for a third of all watercraft sold.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  You’re sitting on a dock on a beautiful lake, dipping your feet in the clear water.  Loons are flying around, (we’re in New England, stay with me,) the sun is shining, and life is good.  Until you hear a cross between a jack-hammer/helicopter/buzz-saw from Hades – and it’s coming straight at you!  Nah, it’s no demon.  Worse, it’s just your neighbors on a jet ski.

So yes, jet skis are loud, annoying, and they rip apart the water like something out of a Michael Bey blockbuster.  And it’s not just your ears that are sensitive.  The whine of a jet ski produces noise levels in the range of 85-105 decibels per unit.  This means harassment for you and local wildlife. 

And according to sources, jet skis are one of the largest sources of water pollution in the United States.  Most traditional jet skis operate on a two stroke engine.  The Surfrider Organization recently reported that this engine discharges­­_­ “as much as one third of their fuel and oil unburned into the water and air, which means a two hour ride on a Personal Water Craft, dumps 2.5 gallons of gas and oil into the water.”  And at around 200,000 units a year, jet skis now account for a third of all watercraft sold.

So jet skis are terrible.  But now there’s a new eco-version that claims to be virtually noise-less and pollution free.  Meet the Eco Watercraft. This electric jet ski is 100% emissions free and 100% silent, and claims that you can “ride where no one else can.”  It was created by a group of athletes committed to reducing emissions.  The accompanying video shows the Eco Watercraft tooling around – and yes, it is silent.  So it is less polluting, noise and otherwise, than traditional jet skis.  And that’s a lot of pro.

But here’s the con – an eco-friendly jet ski is still a shallow water device.  In a law suit recently filed by Friends of the Earth to protect against jet skis, the suit noted that these “high performance vessels designed for speed and maneuverability and are often used to perform stunt-like maneuvers.”   Further, they were banned in 2001 in Florida estuaries because “PWC use poses considerable threats to estuarine flora and fauna, pollutes waters essential to estuarine and marine health, poses unacceptable risks of injury to operators and bystanders, and conflicts with the majority of other longstanding uses of the Seashore.”

So if a jet ski is no longer polluting, it is still accessing shallow wetlands that are home to migrating birds and more.  Even if it is quietly traveling through this space, it is still disrupting the environment.  So in the end, the motto of “riding where no one else can” could be replaced with “how about we just let the lakes be and stick to canoes.”  

>> Check out "Summer Beaches: The Beautiful, the Weird, and the Most Excellent!" for more green getaways!