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A reader of this blog who lives in the state of Baja California Sur Mexico sent me two newspaper articles about water pollution reportedly from cruise ships owned by Carnival Corporation. The articles were published last week from BSCNoticias. The first article titled “Black Stains Appear in the Bay of La Paz, Due to Fuel from Cruise Ships.”

The article continues: “. . . in a video uploaded to social media, a woman shows a transparent jar” with a disgusting “sample from the sea” which the article says is from the ships in the bay. The reader who contacted me further indicates that there are seven cruise ships owned by Carnival Corporation in the bay – three cruise ships operated by Princess Cruises in the area (Grand Princess, Majestic Princess, and Ruby Princess), as well as four ships operated by HAL (Koningsdam, Zuiderdam, Westerdam, and Noordam).

A second article discusses the fact that up to to eight cruise ships are permitted to anchor in LaPaz Bay. Each ship pays Mexico a fee of around 270,000 pesos (approximately $13,500 each).

The director of the local port administration defends the cruise lines saying that the ships allegedly follow “strict environmental standards” and “they do it in a very correct and very wise way.”

Carnival Corporation’s ships are under court supervised criminal probation here in federal court in Miami for widespread air and water pollution.

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Image Credits: Ships in bay – Memin Ojeda via bcsnoticias.