Super-sized cruise ship, Venice, Italy. Photograph: © SAF – Coastal Care
“Environmentalists have long railed against what they brand “sea monsters,” virtually floating cities, each pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases — sailing perilously close to the sea coast to thrill passengers aboard”…
Excerpts;
Idling through the pandemic isn’t just bad for the cruise company’s bottom line, it’s a potential death warrant for their costliest assets: the ships themselves. From mechanical issues to hurricane risks to regulatory hurdles that can constitute criminal offenses, it’s a quagmire that the industry has never faced on this scale before…
Read Full Article, Bloomberg (07-07-2020)
What happens when cruise ships retire; CNN (07-10-2020)
Cruise ships, especially in recent years, have become giant floating cities, chock full of features from casinos to swimming pools, rooftop bars and spas. Most will eventually end up in breaking yards such as Gadani, near the Pakistan port of Karachi, or Alang, India, where they’ll be systematically torn apart.
Breaking Bad on the Beach, NASA / Earth Observatory (09-28-2014)
Tens of thousands of ships ply the world’s oceans, bays, and rivers. But what happens when those ships have become too old or too expensive to operate? In most cases, they end up on the shores of Asia…literally…
The Ship Breakers; The Atlantic (11-24-2014)
The Ship-Breakers, National Geographic (05-2014)
In Bangladesh men desperate for work perform one of the world’s most dangerous jobs…
Chittagong Beach Ship Breaking Yards, Bangladesh, Guardian UK (05-05-2012)
Stretched along 12 miles of what just a decade ago was a pristine sandy beach, ore carriers, container ships, gas tankers, cruise liners and cargo ships of every size and description are being dismantled by hand in 140 similar yards, at Chittagong beach Ship Breaking Yard, Bangladesh, the world’s second largest ship breaking area. Every year more than 250 redundant ships, many from Britain and Europe, come here to be broken up…
Cruise ship captain fined €100,000 for using dirty fuel; Guardian UK (11-26-2018)
The captain of a cruise ship found to be burning fuel with excessive sulphur levels has been fined €100,000 in a Marseille court, the first such ruling in France. The prosecution was intended to signal a new seriousness in tackling pollution from cruise ships…
Princess Cruises Hit With Largest-Ever Criminal Penalty For ‘Deliberate Pollution’; NPR (12-01-2016)
The California-based cruise operator, Princess Cruise Lines, will pay a $40 million fine for “deliberate pollution of the seas and intentional acts to cover it up,” according to the Department of Justice, which calls it “the largest-ever criminal penalty involving deliberate vessel pollution.”..
