Category Archives: Cruises

Polar cruise boom harming the Arctic, explorer warns

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German adventurer Arved Fuchs says he has seen Inuit villages flooded with gawping tourists – ‘Party ships have no place here’

One of the world’s leading polar explorers has warned against the explosive growth in cruise ship tourism in the Arctic, calling it damaging to both the local environment and its inhabitants.

Arved Fuchs, a German adventurer and the first person to reach both the north and south poles on foot in a year, said: “The number of cruise ships is rising, that’s the crux. And the bigger the ship, the more problematic this is. Party ships have no place in the Arctic,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung in an interview.

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Venice cruise ships could be rerouted from city centre next month

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Italian minister proposes plan for diverting a third of big ships to other ports by next year

Italy’s transport minister has proposed a plan for diverting massive cruise ships from Venice’s historic centre, with a view to rerouting a third of the vessels by next year.

Danilo Toninelli told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday that the ships could gradually be shifted away from the Marittima terminal and instead dock at Fusina, a small port on mainland Venice, or Lombardia, a privately owned terminal. The minister suggested that the rerouting process could begin in September.

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Venice asks other ports to help find solution to cruise ship problems

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Italian city’s port authority asks eight other port cities to ‘join forces’ to combat problem

Venice’s port authority has called on Europe’s most popular cruise ship destinations to close ranks in tackling the dangers posed by massive vessels.

The appeal to the ports of Barcelona, Amsterdam, Marseille, Dubrovnik, Zeebrugge, Hamburg, Palma and Málaga comes as Venice leaders clash with government officials over finding a solution to a problem that has long rankled Venetians.

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Toddler who fell to death from cruise ship ‘slipped out of open window’

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Family’s lawyer claims window was left open in children’s play area on 11th storey of Freedom of the Seas in Puerto Rico

An 18-month-old Indiana girl who fell to her death from the 11th storey of a cruise ship in Puerto Rico plunged from a window inexplicably left open in a children’s play area, the family’s attorney has claimed.

Police in Puerto Rico had said on Monday that Chloe Wiegand apparently slipped from her grandfather’s hands on Sunday while he was holding her out of an 11th-floor window on the Freedom of the Seas.

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Barcelona port is worst in Europe for cruise ship air pollution

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City tops list of 50 European ports for both sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions

The port of Barcelona, a city already overwhelmed by mass tourism, has topped a list of 50 European ports for the amount of air pollution produced there by cruise ships, according to a report.

In 2017 cruise ships emitted 32.8 tonnes of sulphur oxide (SOx) in Barcelona, according to the research. Palma de Mallorca was the second most polluted, with 28 tonnes, followed by Venice with 27.5. Southampton, with 19.7 tonnes, was fifth on the list.

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