Well, the news just does not get any better / different for cruise ships and microbes. Despite major efforts (or so they claim) by the cruise industry – people keep spreading Norovirus and other such illnesses aboard cruise ships. For example, see: Illnesses Aboard California Cruise Ship Nearly Double. Not sure just what is going on in all these cases but it seems to me that it might be helpful to have passengers of cruise ships doing some collecting of samples. Seems ripe for a citizen microbiology project …
Update: a follow up / new news story on cruise ship illnesses ..