The DOJ has a history of not arresting cruise executives notwithstanding how widespread the dumping of oil or chemicals in the nations’s waters may be. Will the most recent dumping incidents by Carnival’s subsidiary, Princess Cruises, culminating in a $40,000,000 fine be any different?
Throughout the 1990’s, Royal Caribbean engaged in repeated dumping of everything
The $40,000,000 fine levied against Princess Cruises last week raises the issue of what cruise executives knew about the illegal dumping of oil-contaminated waste from the Caribbean Princess cruise ship and the other illegal practices which took place on the Star Princess, Grand Princess, Coral Princess and Golden Princess.
As the Department of Justice (DOJ)
Multiple news sources are reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will fine Princess Cruises a record $40,000,000 for polluting the seas and trying to cover it up. Princess Cruises will plead guilty to seven felony charges of illegally dumping oil-contaminated waste from the Caribbean Princess cruise ship which sailed to numerous U.S. states
(1).jpg)
A passenger aboard the Pullmantur Monarch (formerly Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas) informed us that the cruise ship apparently struck a whale last week as the ship was returning to the port of Lisbon. He photographed the whale carcass (at bottom) which was lodged on the bulbous bow of the cruise ship. Here’s
Earlier this week, I received information that Disney Cruises is apparently moving ahead with preliminary plans to build a cruise ship pier on an island in north Eleuthera in the Bahamas, called Egg Island.
Disney already has one private cay in the Bahamas where it unloads thousands of cruise tourists (photo bottom).
A poster
Today, the German newspaper Deutsche Welle published an article Faroe Islands: Cruise Boycott Hits Tourism.
The article explains that two German cruise lines, AIDA and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, “have agreed no longer to feature the Faroe Islands. The move comes in response to pressure from animal rights groups to boycott the country over the mass
Yesterday, residents in the Faroe Islands brutally slaughtered a pod of 30-50 pilot whales in the Danish island’s annual gruesome, grindadráp (grind).
The Sea Shepherd organization, which is barred by Denmark from the Faroe Islands, wrote yesterday "the ordeal began this morning when locals spotted a pod of between 100-150 pilot whales passing by Svínoy. Several
.jpg)
On the recent #WorldOceansDay which trended on Twitter this week, the cruise industry’s trade organization, the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), and CLIA travel agents tweeted photos of pristine aqua-colored waters and a beautiful healthy reef in what appears to be an idyllic location somewhere in the Pacific.
They posted tweets claiming to be
The cruise industry has always struggled with its environmental image. The "big three" cruise lines (Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean) were fined tens of millions of dollars collectively in the 1990’s and 2000’s for dumping pollutants into the water and lying to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Cruise lines argue that their days of dumping at
.jpg)
According to the Cayman Compass, the premier of the Cayman Islands says the government intends to build a huge, monolithic concrete cruise pier in George Town harbor.
The environmental impact assessments indicate that the controversial dredge and fill project will cause significant and irreversible environmental damage to the ancient beautiful reefs in the Caymans.
The
The Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente E Dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) (IBAMA) levied a fine of R$ 2.505 million against MSC Cruises.
Based on today’s exchange rate, the fine is approximately $635,545 in U.S. dollars.
IBAMA said that MSC Cruises released garbage into the sea during a cruise
European cruise lines AIDA, Hapag-Lloyd, and P & O have already decided to avoid the Faroe Islands because of the cruel and gruesome slaughter of pilot whales (Grindadrap). Kudos to them. Disney is the only U.S. based cruise line avoiding the Faroes. Double Kudos to the Magical Cruise Company for doing the right thing.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation contends that cruise lines have violated Alaska air pollution regulations for the past five years.
Tradewinds, a shipping trade organization, and the Juneau Empire report that Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) and Royal Caribbean Cruises disclosed in recent SEC earnings reports that they violated Alaskan Marine Vessel Visible Emission Standards.
.jpg)
A reader of Cruise Law News asked me last week what I thought of cruise lines sailing to Denmark’s Faroe Islands (sometimes called Faeroe Islands) where they slaughter pilot whales. I didn’t know anything about the issue, but I promised that I would look into it.
This weekend I read up on what I now
The Caymans is the latest island in the Caribbean where the cruise lines are beating their drums for a new multi-million dollar pier to be built for them in order to expand the business of cruising.
I saw this same scenario unfold in Falmouth, Jamaica where Royal Caribbean ram-roded a plan to dredge ancient coral
Last week Carnival announced its new brand "fathom" as the first "first voluntourism cruise line." It said that the new cruise line will focus on the "environment" and "sustainability," which seem like ridiculous propositions to me given Carnival’s deplorable record of polluting the air and water. Plus the new brand is going to operate the
The Friends of the Earth (FOE) non-profit organization just released its "Cruise Ship Report Card" for 2014. In a press release, the FOE states that "cruise ships dumped more than a billion gallons of sewage in the ocean this year, much of it raw or poorly treated . . "
The amount of raw
.jpg)
Kallis Video Production’s YouTube page shows a video of the arrival of Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas in Bremerhaven on October 5, 2014.
The video was taken from a gyrocopter.
The Quantum is the latest ballyhooed giant cruise ship from Royal Caribbean. Two weeks ago it was trotted out from the Meyer Werft shipyard in Germany
