Snail plague: cruise ship "Coral Princess" has to stop shortly before the port
Created: 2022-12-28 06:12
By: Martina Lippl
Cruise ship "Coral Princess" (archive photo): Snails lived in the drain pipes.
© Jono Searle /imago
Due to snail infestation, a cruise ship had to change its route unscheduled.
The trip to New Zealand at Christmas went completely differently than planned for thousands of passengers.
Brisbane – what a mess!
Around 2000 passengers on board the US cruise ship "Coral Princess" experienced a real surprise at Christmas.
The captain changed the itinerary of the two-week cruise at short notice.
A special highlight was on the program over the holiday.
New Zealand stopped the ship of the US shipping company
Princess Cruises
.
Snails were found in the Coral Princess's drains.
Driving through the waters was taboo at first.
Snails in the drains: cruise ship has to change itinerary
The luxury ship left Brisbane (Australia) on December 19 and had already been on course for New Zealand for three days.
Then the passage through New Zealand's Milford Sound was canceled without further ado.
A stay in Port Chalmers the following day also literally fell through, reports the cruise
portal maritime-executive.com.
Passengers were informed that "an unplanned additional hull cleaning would have to be carried out before our call to New Zealand".
The ship had to change course and then continued along the east coast of New Zealand.
Divers then cleaned the Coral Princess's hull and drainpipes outside New Zealand's territorial waters.
The passengers were forced to spend two more days at sea.
So shortly before Christmas, the change of route was received rather “negatively” by the passengers, New Zealand media reports.
After all, they would have missed some of New Zealand's most beautiful sights.
Not everyone understood New Zealand's strict environmental regulations.
Cruise: New Zealand insists on strict environmental rules
However, the sea slugs posed a "high risk," according to a spokesman for New Zealand Biosecurity.
"We know that almost 90 per cent of marine pests enter this country on the underwater surfaces of international ships," Biosecurity NZ's Paul Hallett told
Stuff.nz
.
Ships that are turned away because of dirty hulls are not uncommon.
According to him, around six percent of international ships had been turned away since 2020.
But, not only the snails spoiled the mood of the passengers.
The cruise ship docked in Lyttelton Harbor on Christmas Day.
Thousands have reportedly been bussed into the town of Lyttelton (population 3,170).
Most of the shops in the picturesque town were “unsurprisingly” closed at this point.
Even for two cruise regulars that was a "disgrace",
Stuff.nz tells
us
.
The "Coral Princess" is now on its way to Tauranga (New Zealand).
A nice vacation at sea almost ended in a nightmare for a cruise passenger.
A cruise ship passenger died at sea for more than 20 hours.
The 28-year-old actually wanted to go to the toilet and woke up in the water.
(ml)
