Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

Last week a number of news organizations reported on the story about the release of hydrogen sulfide aboard the Monarch of the Seas in 2005 which killed three crewmembers, injured at least nineteen other ship employees and threatened the health of thousands of cruise passengers.

We blogged about this disastrous event last week in our article "Royal Caribbean Demonstrated "Gross Indifference" to Passengers' Lives."  Our article followed NBC Los Angeles's report that a Miami Judge found that Royal Caribbean Cruises demonstrated "a gross indifference to the life and health" of passengers by continuing to cruise with a ship that "that allowed poison gas exposure to its passengers." 

In following up on this story, we found that Royal Caribbean staff captain Bjørn Eidissen, who is now at the center of this story, reported that four months after the poison gas incident, the Monarch of the Seas dumped "tons" of  sediment, chemicals and bacteria while the cruise ship was approaching a dry dock in January of 2006.  

Staff Captain Bjørn Eidissen was apparently on vacation when this occurred, but he subsequently complained on an U.S. Coast Guard forum that the dumping was reported to CEO Richard Fain.  Yet, the cruise line apparently did not report this intentional discharge to the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Here is what staff captain Bjørn Eidissen posted online in 2008:  

"Need to report of environmental crime and ships safety issue . .

Cruiseship Monarch of the Seas, while underway to dry dock in Jan. 2006.  San Fransisco
emptied tanks to sea, against Marpol and Royal Caribbeans SQM environmental policy.
Tank concern was DD11,usen as fixed ballast, contained tons of sediment,chemicals,and bacterias . . the tank had been the source of an accident in San Pedro Sept.  2nd.2005.  Methan gas accident, 3 casualties.

Probobly cause of the crime,was to save money and time in Drydock, cleaningwork was scheduled.  According to ships stability manual,DD11 was not to be emptied at sea,due to negative stability would occour.  Ship had approx. 1000 peoples onboard,crew and contractors
The ballastrepport sendt to USCG does not reflect correct status,as the tank was emptied just before DD.and was free of liquids when entering drydock.

Ship was given gas free cerificate by the yard,although over 100ppm methane and H2S was measured when in ddrydock . . cleaning work was cancelled due to that fact.  The most serious action was putting the cruiseship in negative stability jepardizing all lifes onboard,in addition to the environmental crime by discharging the tank inside legal borders.

This was reported to CEO Richard Fain early may 2006,by mail from Norway, but no action was taken, and ot was not reported to USCG,as the intention of the repoting letter was. 

Please take notice of this message and forward it to whom it may concern.  Please contact by e-mail Chief Officer Jan Andreassen..e-mail janjacoba@gmail.com or Captain B.Eidissen mail b_eidissen@yahoo.no, chief officer was onboard at the time of the crime,and witness all actions.but was kept out of the loop by RCCL superintendant and Chief Engineer - Chief Officer protested, but was not heard.  I was at home in Norway when I was told by acting Captain Jørn Clausen, that the tank had been emptied against his knowledge, and had put him in a imposssible position towards the cruise company, and coast Guard.

I took action from Norway,while on vacation, and wrote to CEO Richard Fain, as mentioned erlyer, but it has come to my knowledge that the cruise company Royal caribbean International, did not pass my report over to USCG, as whas my intention with lthe report in the first place.

Please forward this message to coast guard high ranking officers,PLEASE,IMPORTANT
It has seemed almost impassible to get authorities here in Norway,to understand the seriousness of this crime,and to even believe in it.

Thanks for your help.

Captain Bjørn Eidissen"

Assuming this information is accurate, did Royal Caribbean cover this up?  I see no mention that this incident was reported to the Coast Guard or that there were any fines levied against the cruise line.

Royal Caribbean has a dreadful history of environmental crimes and a corporate culture of covering the crimes up.

In the late 1990's, the U.S. Coast Guard caught Royal Caribbean engaged in widespread dumping of oil and chemicals.  The Justice Department responded by fining the cruise line $1,000,000.  In response, the cruise line went to its PR people who dreamed up a campaign of "Save the Waves."  The PR experts posed the cruise line as a leader in protecting the environment.  Royal Caribbean posted this mantra on signs all over its cruise ships.  All of the waiters, bar tenders, and cabin attendants had to wear "Save the Waves" badges touting the cruise line's commitment to protecting the seas on which it sailed. 

The problem, however, is that the cruise line didn't change its ways.  Royal Caribbean continued to illegally discharge oil, waste and fecal matter everywhere from the Caribbean to the pristine waters of Alaska.

The Feds caught Royal Caribbean dumping again.  And the U.S. government fined the cruise line again - this time $8,000,000 - and placed it on probation.  Did Royal Caribbean learn its lesson?  No, the illegal discharges increased.  While the crew members wore their "save the waves" buttons above deck while serving passengers cocktails, Royal Caribbean engineers below the decks fabricated secret by-pass values to dump everything from raw sewage to chemicals used in the photography labs directly into the ocean. Royal Caribbean cruise ship even dumped oil and sewage into the waters right outside of the executives' windows overlooking Biscayne Bay.

The U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno, a Miami resident herself and an environmentalist as well, was not amused. The discrepancy between how the cruise held itself out to the public as a green company versus its actual criminal conduct was not lost on the Attorney General.  By the time she was through, Royal Caribbean pled guilty to multiple felonies, received another whopping fine of $18,000,000, and agreed to a five year probation.

The U.S. leveled the felony charges not just because of the repeated and massive scale of the dumping of pollutants but because the cruise line continued to lie. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno stated at a press conference: 

.  .  . at the same time that their ships were sailing into the inland passage of Alaska, one of the most sensitive and beautiful eco-systems in our nation, their crew members were wearing buttons that said, 'Save the Waves.'  That's what they were wearing above deck.  Below deck, business as usual was going on and oily contaminated bilge water was being dumped overboard . . .

Attorney General Reno was rightfully outraged: " .  .  . if people flim-flam us, they should expect the consequences .  .  ."  When the sentencing was over, the U.S. Government fined Royal Caribbean a total of $27,000,000 and placed the cruise line on probation for five years. 

A number of environmental organizations considered Royal Caribbean to be the poster child for cruise dumping.  The Oceana organization initiated a campaign against the cruise line which included flying banners over Royal Caribbean ships saying "Got Sewage? Royal Caribbean Dumps Daily."   

Did the cruise line resort to its old ways and empty the bilges of the Monarch of the Seas off of the shores of San Francisco in 2006?    

Does anyone have information about this January 2006 alleged incident?

June 20, 2011 Update:  This article was picked as a top 10 law blog by LexBlog.

Photo credit:  National Sky Ads

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The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Obama administration will enforce a California law designed to prohibit cruise ships from dumping any kind of sewage -- even highly filtered wastewater -- along California's coast out to three miles from shore.

California will now have among the strictest laws in the nation limiting pollution from large ships.

"This is going to cover the entire California coastline," said state Senator Joe Simitian "Oceangoing vessels should not consider our coastline a place for dumping sewage."

In 2005, Simitian wrote a bill that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger which signed banning sewage discharges in state waters from cruise ships. The bill -- the first of its kind in the nation -- made it illegal for such ships to discharge oily bilge water, "gray water" from sinks and showers and other hazardous waste. But a key provision that also banned sewage releases could not legally take effect until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave permission under the federal Clean Water Act.  The Bush administration did not act on California's request to enforce the state law.

The impetus behind the bill was a cruise dumping incident in In 2003.  The Crystal Harmony (photo left) dumped around 35,000 gallons of grey water, sewage, and bilge water in a marine sanctuary in Monterey Bay.  

According to the L.A. Times, Crystal Cruises said didn't have to report the incident to authorities because it broke no laws. It is "perfectly legal" under maritime laws to discharge even untreated wastewater more than 12 miles offshore, and the ship was 14 miles offshore at the time, said Crystal spokeswoman Mimi Weisband. 

"We didn't break any law," Weisband said. "We did break a promise."

The city of Monterey thereafter banned all Crystal cruise ships for life. 

"I remember picking up the paper and thinking, 'you gotta be kidding me,' " Senator Simitian said. "Their answer was 'we didn't break any rules.' I remember thinking, if this isn't against the law it ought to be."

In the 2010 Green Report Card by the environmental group Friends of the Earth, Crystal Cruises received the lowest grade - "F."   Cruise spokesperson Weisband responded by saying that Crystal Cruises "deserved an A ... if not an A+."

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The Juneau Empire reports that Alaska just weakened its wastewater regulations at the cruise industry's request.  Cruise ships are now permitted to dump greater amount of ammonia (from fecal matter), copper, nickel and zinc in Alaska's pristine waters.

The newspaper reports that the cruise industry is "pleased" and  and "appreciates" the new wastewater discharge rules.

The cruise industry bullied Alaska, threatening the state with pulling cruise ships from Alaska if the wastewater standards were not relaxed.  Some cruise lines planned to reduce time in the ports in Alaska, so that they could sail outside of state waters and dump wastewater without being subject to Alaska's strict standards.

Cruise lines have been toying with Alaska even since its citizens passed an initiative to increase taxes and enact wastewater regulations to protect Alaskan waters from massively polluting cruise ships.  On Earth Day last week, the New York Times characterized cruise lines as "notorious polluters."  

The cruise industry is having its way with Alaska at this point.

It's agenda was first to wiggle out of Alaska's taxes, but the tax issue was never about whether the $46 head tax was too high.  The cruise lines didn't pay the tax in the first place.  Cruise passengers did.  It is ludicrous to suggest that a family would decide to cruise if the tax were $34 but not cruise at $46.

The real issue has always been the issue of whether the cruise industry would permit a state like Alaska to regulate it.  State of the art pollution technology is expensive.  Cruise lines don't pay any Federal taxes on the $35,000,000,000 they collect on fares each year from tax paying Americans. They don't want to set a precedent of allowing states to impose standards to protect their natural resources.  It's cheaper to pollute.

Earlier this year, the cruise industry twisted the arms of some of the Republican legislators in Alaska and kicked green water scientist Gershon Cohen off of the state's wastewater panel.  This was pay back for Mr. Cohen's work in passing the regulations which strengthened  Alaska's environmental regulations.  With Mr. Cohen removed from the panel, it was easy pickings to gut the pollution standards to benefit the polluters.     

A few weeks ago, Alaska announced it was reducing it's "head tax" on cruise passenger by 25%.  Today, it has relaxed its pollution regulations.  All of this is working exactly as the cruise industry planned after a year of threats and lawsuits. 

The Juneau Empire printed a letter from an Alaskan reader "Beaten Up By Bullies."

It's amazing to see how a "notorious polluting" Miami-based industry which collects $35 billion a year tax-free can threaten and bully Alaska to get exactly what it wants - reduced state taxes, relaxed pollution laws, and more profits . . .

For additional information, consider reading:

Polluting Cruise Industry Tries Again to Avoid Alaskan Regulations

Credits:

Royal Caribbean's Vision of the Seas cruise ship    AlaskanLibrarian's Flickr photostream

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The Charleston City Paper has an interesting headline this morning - "Are Cruise Ship Harmless Fun Or An Environmental Scourge?"

The article raises the issue of how South Carolina will face its future as a state with a major cruise port.  Unlike progressive states like Alaska, California and Maine which regulate waste water discharges, the state of South Carolina has no state regulations relating to the cruise industry. This leaves the cruise lines subject to only lax international regulations, which have not been updated for a long time and which the cruise lines have routinely violated anyway. 

What's remarkable about the article is that it reveals that cruise lines can legally dump garbage and untreated sewage overboard when the ships are at least three miles offshore. 

Although the cruise industry claims that it dumps untreated sewage ("blackwater") only 12 miles from shore, the effects of the human waste from thousands of passengers and crew are disastrous.   The waste dumped by cruise ships into the water contains bacteria, pathogens, disease, intestinal parasites, pharmaceuticals, nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous and - whenever there is a norovirus outbreak - gallons and gallons of infected feces which, in turn, are consumed by fish and filter-fed by shellfish.

We have touched upon dumping feces just 12 miles off the coast of South Carolina before - "Can Sick Cruise Ships Cause Norovirus Outbreaks in Ports?"

You can carefully read all of the press releases and letters to the editors by the cruise industry, but  nowhere will you see a strict commitment from cruise lines not to dump untreated sewage.  This is not only gross, but its an unnecessary hazard to the health of humans, marine life and coral systems wherever cruise ships sail.  As pointed out by the non-profit organization Friends of the Earth:

"The contaminants in human waste and wastewater – known as blackwater or sewage – pose a risk to public health not only through the food supply, as fisheries and shellfish beds can be contaminated, but also through direct contamination of water ingested by surfers, beachgoers, and water-sport enthusiasts. In addition, blackwater contains nitrogen and phosphorus that promote excessive algal growth, which in turn consumes oxygen in the water and can lead to fish kills and the destruction of other aquatic life, including coral . . ."

Is cruising fun?  Is it harmful to the environment?  Yes, to both questions.

That's why South Carolina would be smart to protect its waters and its people from the scourge of cruise pollution and adopt wastewater regulations similar to those enacted in Alaska.

For additional information, consider reading: "Cruise Ships In Charleston."

Credits:

Photograph              Coastal Conversation League 

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Over the past week, those of you who read my blog but don't Twitter missed the remarkable phenomenon of bickering between a small group of travel bloggers invited by Princess Cruises to promote cruising under the hash tag #followmeatsea - and a larger group of green travelers who could not stomach the wow-cruising-is-amazing tone of the tweets.  

"Bickering" may be an understatement.  The debate was more like the food fight in one of my favorite movies, Animal House.    

And boy did I enjoy it.  

The first time I read that Princess Cruises was making its foray into social media with #followmeatsea, I knew that it  was going to be a disaster.  

In September, I praised the social media skills of Princess Cruises' sister company P & O Cruises for its use of YouTube by its CEO to provide information and diffuse criticism in "Cruise Lines and Social Media - P & O Cruises Hits A Home Run," but I blasted Princess Cruises for its lack of social web skills. 

The problem with Princess was that it was oblivious to the discussion raging on Twitter when one of its cruise ships caught on fire.  When Princess finally responded days later, it lost credibility by refusing to engage in a conversation on Twitter and by referring the public to its its self-serving and misleading press statements.   

And here we are again.

The green travelers baited the here's-a-free-cruise-so-write-something-nice-about-us bloggers on Princess' Crown Princess with questions about the obvious unsustainability of cruising.  The bloggers were blind-sided.  While Princess's guests were being skewered, Princess ignored the environmental inquiries but chose to re-tweet only the most mundane isn't-this-wonderful tweets by its new friends with comments like "Beautiful!" or "Too funny!"  

When Princess finally responded to the spot-on environmental criticisms, it referred to a statement on its website (circa 2008). But it refused to answer a single question about the use of bunker fuel or its ongoing history of discharge violations which continue to this day. 

With good reason.  Princess has the most deplorable environmental record of any of the 25 cruise lines sailing out of the U.S. over the last couple of months. Lets put the nicely written environmental policies on its slick web site aside for a moment. Take a look at Princess Cruises' actual practices:    

In September, the Diamond Princess, Island Princess, Pacific  Princess, Sapphire Princess and Sea Princess were cited for violating the Alaska Wastewater Quality Standards.  Again, in October, the Diamond Princess, Island Princess, Pacific Princess, Sapphire Princess and Sea Princess - together with the Golden Princess - were cited for water discharge violations.

This month, the same culprits - the Diamond Princess, Island Princess, Sea Princess, Golden Princess and Diamond Princess were busted for pollution.  The charges?  Dumping illegal levels of copper, ammonia, zinc and fecal coliform bacteria into Alaska's pristine waters. It was therefore hard to read one of the bloggers' comments:  

The Norwegian Environmental Officer who charmed the blogger no doubt looked very impressive and convincing in his white uniform. But nothing could be further from the truth. Princess Cruises had bamboozled this nice travel writer and set her up for ridicule.  

Now, I will admit. I tweeted a few grenades into the #followmeatsea debate, asking about the start of a trial in L.A. where a Princess Cruises waiter allegedly sexually assaulted a passenger aboard the Coral Princess, as well as Princess Cruises' nasty practice of dumping insufficiently treated chemicals and feces into Alaska's clean waters.  Princess Cruises ignored these pointed questions, although one brave blogger promised to ask the Environmental Officer about the violations and tweet his answer.  

The problem here is that Princess doesn't realize that it cannot control the debate by inviting a few nice people onto their cruise ship with the hope that they write nice things about the cruise. Todd Lucier wrote an interesting blog on Princess' social media debacle entitled "Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media: Lessons from #followmeatsea."  Deadly Sin #1, according to Mr. Lucier, is "thinking you can control social media."  

Unlike the cult-of-personality cruise community sites like CruiseCritic and CruiseMates where membership requires group-think cheerleading and true cruise critics are banished, the Twitter forum is pure free speech.  Fortunately, there are many free thinkers out there with a healthy dose of cynicism.  Princess Cruises' #followmeatsea happy talk was predestined to turn into a discussion of real issues, which the cruise line was ill-prepared to handle.

The spirited back and forth on Twitter was invigorating.  But I am still waiting for a response from Princess Cruises' Environmental Officer about Princess' last 17 wastewater violations.

Credits:

Coral Princess    Barbara Bagnell (via National Post)

#followmeatsea tweet          Todd Lucier     

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