The popular Crew Center blog published an article last week titled Smoke From First Cruise Ship of Alaska Season Alarms Juneau Residents. It mentioned that in mid-April, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL)’s cruise ship, Norwegian Bliss, sailed into Juneau, becoming the first ship to arrive in the Alaskan capital and officially launching the 2025 cruise
Virgin Voyages’ Resilient Lady has created quite a stir over the last several months when it called on Hobart, Tasmania during its regular three-six day cruises from Melbourne and Sydney. The cruise ship has been extensively photographed belching out smoke which fills the port, sparking a heated debate whether the public is seeing just harmless
Last week, I received an email from a resident of Palm Beach County. It said “Port of Palm Beach July 31, appx 10:30 am” with a single attachment. When I opened the attachment (above), I immediately recognized the Grand Celebration’s orange painted funnel, out of which thick black smoke billowed over the port.
The funnel
Cruise ships are a major source of air pollution which causes and/or contributes to a wide range of serious health problems such as respiratory ailments, lung disease, cancer and premature deaths. The pollutants from ship engines exhaust gases include sulfer oxides(SOx) as well as non-combustible particulate matter and black carbon. A video of a Carnival
The State of Alaska yesterday fined Holland America Line (HAL) around $17,000 for dumping untreated grey water from one of its cruise ships.
NPR reported that HAL’s Westerdam cruise ship was visiting the national park a year ago, on September 11, 
2018, when a crew member illegally discharged grey water. Details of the illegal dumping
Today a group of victims of Carnival Corporation’s environmental crimes sought to vacate the Court’s approval of an out of court settlement reached between the U.S. Government and Carnival Corporation.
The attorney for Fotini Duncombe (a Bahamian citizen and co-founder of a Bahamas Environmental group called “reEarth”), Theodore Thoma (the head of a environmental group
On Friday, May 24th, United District Court Judge Patricia Seitz, who is presiding over the pollution case pending against Princess Cruises, ordered all members of the Carnival Corporation & plc Executive Committee of the Board of Directors to appear at a hearing scheduled for June 3, 2019 at the federal courthouse in Miami.
The hearing
On June 30th, Princess Cruises celebrated the Majestic Princess’s maiden cruise to Taiwan by releasing hundreds of red, blue, yellow, and pink balloons from the ship, which it photographed and posted on its Facebook page.
The reaction to this environmentally-harmful publicity stunt was immediate. At the time of publishing this article, there were over
The cruise industry is touting a report titled Evaluation of Cruise Industry, Global Environmental Practices and Performance.
It’s a non-critical summary paid for by the industry’s trade organization, the Cruise Line International Association ("CLIA"). The report is largely a PR stunt which omits the relevant, recent history of the practice committed over the course
The Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente E Dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) (IBAMA) levied a fine of R$ 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
A reader of Cruise Law News has informed us that a television station in Brazil just released a story about a MSC cruise ship dumping garbage bags into the sea off of the coast of Brazil. The story is based on a cruise passenger’s account. You can see what appears to be blag bags being
Governor Parnell and the pro-cruise pollution legislators in Alaska have some new talking points in their efforts to weaken the cruise line waste water restrictions. They say that its not the cruise sewage that will harm the state’s image but their opponents’ "hype" that easing the standards will result in "dirty water and terrible discharges."
In 2006, Alaskan citizens sent a clear message to the cruise industry that cruise ships could not treat the beautiful waters of Alaska like a toilet.
Seven years ago Alaskan voters approved legislation that prohibited cruise ships from discharging "untreated sewage, treated sewage, graywater or other wastewaters in a manner that violates any applicable
The Smart Planet blog has an interesting article about the effects of the ever growing cruise industry upon ports in Asia.
Entitled Hong Kong Contends with Pollution from a Growing Cruise Industry, the article reveals the extent to which cruise lines are still burning bunker fuel while not even equipping their ships with the
KTOO news station in Alaska reports today that the Environmental Protection Agency fined Princess Cruises $20,000 for dumping water from six swimming pools aboard the Golden Princess cruise ship into Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in 2011.
The EPA announced the fine against the cruise line yesterday.
Princess was forced to sign a consent agreement
The Vancouver Sun published a provocative headline this weekend entitled "B.C. Waters a Toilet Bowl of Raw Sewage."
It caught my attention after my family just returned from a vacation from British Columbia, where my kids surfed and we went whale watching in the B.C. waters.
Environmentalists’ believe that waters off British Columbia in Canada are the
Newspapers in Alaska are reporting that the cruise industry is behind the sudden removal of a highly qualified green water scientist from an advisory council on cruise ship waste water discharge.
In December 2009, the Alaskan Department of Environmental Conservation ("DEC") invited environmental scientist Gershon Cohen to join the state’s cruise ship waste water treatment science panel. The advisory panel has 11 members, with experts in
A report entitled "Getting a Grip on Cruise Pollution" released today by the Friends of the Earth (FOE) organization concludes that the billions of dollars earned by the cruise industry 
each year comes at a significant cost to our nation’s air and water.
The report was researched and authored by Ross Klein, a Professor
