If every ship were taken out of the water, would sea levels change?

Check your subscription status, update your details and more. If every ship were taken out of the water, would sea levels change? This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions.

Here’s what our readers had to say **If every ship on the planet were hauled out of the water, how much would global sea levels change, and how quickly?** If the world’s ocean-going commercial fleet were removed from the sea, global mean sea level would quickly fall, but by only a matter of micrometres. By Archimedes’ principle, a floating vessel displaces enough water for the mass of that water to equal the combined mass of the vessel and everything aboard it. This means that a ship with a total mass of 100,000 tonnes displaces 100,000 tonnes of seawater, equivalent to about 97,560 cubic metres, given a seawater density of approximately 1.025 tonnes per cubic metre.

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