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Princess Cruises and Belize
Mon, April 24, 2017
In December of last year, Princess Cruises, a cruise ship brand owned by Carnival, pled guilty to charges of illegally disposing of oil-contaminated waste and falsifying official logs to cover up the discharges. Princess was charged in a US Court and was fined a record $40 million penalty, the largest fine ever for deliberate ship pollution.

According to reports, the illegal activity was brought to light by a newly hired British engineer on the "Princess Caribbean" in 2013. The engineer told authorities that a "magic pipe" was used to discharge about 4227 gallons of waste about 23 miles off the coast of England, well within the country's exclusive economic zone. The engineer alleged that when the waste was being released, the other engineers would run clean water through the ship's sensors and distort the digital records.

After the reports came out, the Caribbean Princess was inspected twice, first in England and then in New York. During both inspections the ship's crew were found to have lied about any illegal activity under orders from the engineering officers.

It's news here because the Caribbean Princess is a regular in Belize's port. According to the official ship schedule, the ship has visited Belize 16 times between February 2016 and March of this year. And it's just one of 5 ships in Princess Cruise's fleet to be found guilty of this practice.





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