Carnival Cruise Line has invited guests behind-the-scenes to “sea” sustainability in action with a new video highlighting onboard environmental initiatives across the Fun Ship fleet.

Released ahead of Earth Day, April 22, the video offers insights about what one of the most popular and largest cruise lines in the world is doing to keep marine and port destination environments clean and healthy.

New Video Shows Onboard Environmental Practices

In a new “Sea Sustainability in Action” video tour, Carnival Cruise Line is showing guests firsthand different environmental measures taken onboard all the line’s 25 vessels.

The video showcases ships in different worldwide destinations, with behind-the-scenes footage aboard the cruise line’s flagship, Carnival Celebration. First up is the 24-hour Recycling Center onboard, where, fleetwide, 11 million pounds of recyclables are sorted and processed each year.

You can watch the video below:

“It’s everybody’s responsibility on the ship to make sure that waste is properly sorted so that we can maximize recycling,” said Richard Pruitt, vice president of Environmental Operations for Carnival Cruise Line.

The video goes on to showcase the biodigesters, machines that use beneficial bacteria to literally digest soft food scraps and break down. Biodigesters are located in every ship’s galley for efficient use. Compared to 2019, food waste has been reduced by 35% across the Carnival fleet.

The video also briefly mentions liquefied natural gas (LNG) as it relates to air emissions, as well as other technical aspects of ship operations – automation, upgraded hardware, and engine efficiency that are all part of the line’s sustainability practices.

Even guest behavior is related to sustainability, with asking guests to conserve water and electricity onboard.

“Our guests have to play their part,” said Pruitt. “When we ask them to save electricity, we ask them to not waste water, they respond very well. They want to play their part. They want to know that when it comes time for their next cruise vacation, they want to know that that place has been preserved so that they can go back and enjoy it.”

How Guests Can Practice Sustainability on a Cruise

There are many ways cruise guests can practice good sustainability onboard, whether they are sailing with Carnival or any other cruise line.

Reusing towels, whether bathroom towels or beach towels, can help reduce the need for laundry, saving water and electricity as well as minimizing soap and other chemicals. Guests could also ask their stateroom attendants for just their favorite towel animals or none at all, so extra towels do not need to be washed.

Turning off the water while brushing teeth or shaving can also lead to significant savings, as can taking shorter showers.

Being mindful of food choices can go a long way toward minimizing food waste, such as not taking extra at the buffet, asking for half servings in the main dining room, or splitting with a friend when guests may not be sure if they will enjoy a particular dish.

Read Also: Carnival Announces Massive Advances in Sustainability

Guests should always be sure nothing they use blows off the ship and into the ocean, whether it may be while dining on an open deck or relaxing on their balcony. Littering is strictly prohibited and is a violation of Carnival’s policies.

While on shore, guests can also help protect the environments of every destination they visit by following the adage “take only pictures, leave only footprints” and never littering or damaging local plants.

Minding “keep off” signs for delicate hillsides or garden beds, as well as not damaging reefs while snorkeling or scuba diving can also help protect amazing cruise destinations.

Guests featured in a recent viral video as they caught a fish off their stateroom balcony have now been banned for life from Carnival Cruise Line.

The guests’ behavior was in violation of the several of the cruise line’s policies, as well as local laws in The Bahamas, where the incident took place.

Fishing Gets Carnival Guests Banned

Many people enjoy fishing, and some cruises even offer a variety of fishing excursions at different destinations. A pair of Carnival Cruise Line guests have learned the hard way, however, that it is not acceptable to fish off one’s stateroom balcony.

In an incident reported several days ago, two Carnival guests were seen fishing from their balcony stateroom in a video posted to TikTok. While the cruise ship and sailing date were not identified, one of the guests was clearly wearing a Carnival Sail-and-Sign card, with the blue card indicating it was the guest’s first sailing with the cruise line.

You can watch the passengers fishing from the Carnival cruise balcony below:

Background details in the video identify the port as Nassau, as the new dock structures nearing completion can clearly be seen, which indicates the video was filmed relatively recently.

Carnival Cruise Line has reacted to the incident with a brief statement: “Fishing from our ships is prohibited. We have identified the guests and they will not be cruising on Carnival again,” a cruise line representative stated.

Carnival Cruise Line’s brand ambassador, John Heald, also noted the prohibition on his popular Facebook page. “Fishing from our balconies or from anywhere else on board is not permitted,” he said.

To protect the identity of those involved, the names of the passengers have not been released, nor has Carnival confirmed which ship they had sailed on. The TikTok video and its associated account have since been deleted.

Policies Violated and Laws Broken

While there is no precise policy in Carnival Cruise Line’s ticket contract that prohibits fishing from a balcony stateroom, the action does violate a number of other policies that are outlined.

First, in section 9(a), every guest “agrees to abide by all shipboard rules and policies” and any violation “may cause Guest to be prohibited from sailing with Carnival in the future.”

Section 4(e) explicitly states “No Guest is permitted to bring on board the Vessel live animals” other than qualified service dogs with appropriate advance notice. The fish that was caught is seen alive in the video, and most definitely brought aboard the ship to the guests’ balcony.

“Fish of any kind” are also explicitly listed on Carnival’s prohibited items list, with the note that any fish caught during an excursion must be shipped home rather than brought onboard the ship.

Depending on how the incident is interpreted, the guests involved may be in violation of section 9(j) with respect to the cruise line’s environmental policy, which covers “releasing any unauthorized item overboard” – and an illegally caught fish could certainly be regarded as an unauthorized item, thought the video does not show whether or not the guests did return it overboard.

Finally, all Carnival guests are subject to “local requirements in respect of immigration, border patrol, customs and excise, agriculture, health, environment, or any other government regulation whatsoever.”

This means the implicated guests may have broken local laws by not securing the proper permits for fishing, which would be under environmental jurisdiction as well as Customs and Immigration for foreign visitors to The Bahamas.

When Can You Go Fishing?

Fishing is a popular hobby, and guests can choose from different shore excursions that offer fishing experiences, depending on their ship’s sailing date, itinerary, ports of call, and seasonal conditions.

For Carnival guests, fishing excursions are occasionally offered in The Bahamas, Mexico, Alaska, St. Lucia, Bermuda, Bonaire, Belize, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and even Fiji. The types of fishing vary from sport fishing to reef fishing to deep sea fishing depending on the destination.

On these authorized tours, the tour operators arrange for all proper permits and ensure safe fishing conditions. Some tours even include “eat what you catch” or “cook your catch” opportunities for the freshest seafood imaginable.

Automatic gratuities can be a convenience for cruise guests, but it can also be confusing to understand just which crew members onboard receive those tips.

Carnival Cruise Line brand ambassador John Heald has offered some clarification about who receives automatic gratuities as well as how any extra tips are divided amongst crew members and what happens if tips are removed from onboard accounts.

How Automatic Gratuities Are Offered

Many cruise lines post automatic gratuities to guests’ onboard accounts as a convenient way for tips to be extended to hard-working crew members. This is usually done in at a set daily rate, and may be posted to guests’ accounts each day, or in one or two lump sums during the cruise.

Guests may also pre-pay these automatic gratuities at the prevailing rate at the time they book their cruise, therefore avoiding any extra charge on their account during the cruise.

On Carnival Cruise Line, the automatic gratuity rate is $16 (USD) per person, per day as of April 1, 2023. This covers guests in all standard staterooms, whether interior, ocean view, or balcony cabins. Rates are higher in suites, at $18 per person, per day, because of the extra amenities and more personalized services for suites.

Guests have long wondered how gratuities are distributed to crew members, and some guests prefer to remove the automatic gratuities in favor of presenting tips directly to the crew members they see the most.

Carnival Cruise Line brand ambassador John Heald has now offered some details about how both automatic and extra gratuities are distributed, specifically for “Your Time Dining” guests who may not have the same dining room servers each night, depending on when they choose to eat and what part of the dining room they are seated in.

“Firstly the waiters on Your Time Dining all pool or share the tips together that are pre-paid or charged to your sail and sign account,” Heald explained. “Any extra cash tips you give a waiter is kept by them and shared only with their assistant waiter who also served you directly.”

Read Also: Cruise Gratuities – Guide to Tipping on a Cruise Ship

This means that all staff members get that extra monetary recognition through the automatic gratuities, whether pre-paid or added to guests’ accounts during the cruise.

Guests who want to reward extra special service to individual servers, however, should do so through extra cash offered directly to the crew member.

What About Stateroom Attendants?

While Heald did not indicate if the same policy applies to stateroom attendants who provide clean towels, refresh the bedding, clean bathrooms, and take care of other stateroom tasks, it stands to reason that the distribution of gratuities is similar.

Automatic or pre-paid gratuities may be pooled for distribution among all a ship’s stateroom attendants, while extra cash goes just to the crew members it is offered to from individual guests.

Are Crew Members Told If Gratuities Are Removed?

Recently, Heald also addressed another controversial topic about gratuities – whether or not crew members are informed if guests remove their automatic gratuities.

Because gratuities are always optional, every guest has the ability to remove or adjust the automatic gratuities on their Sail-and-Sign accounts (pre-paid gratuities cannot be adjusted). It has long been rumored that crew members are given a list of which staterooms have removed gratuities, which may then impact the service they offer to those guests.

“The crew are not ever shown a list of the specific cabins that may have removed gratuities,” Heald clarified. “Now they will know by how much they receive compared to the number of tables they wait on or the number of cabins they clean but which cabins removed them, no, they are not shown a list.”

Heald has noted many times that the vast majority of Carnival Cruise guests do not remove gratuities, and of those who do remove the automatic tips, many guests offer cash payment to their stateroom attendants, dining room staff, and other crew members.

“We will continue to allow people to remove gratuities if they wish,” Heald said. “We know (because we ask the crew) how many tip in cash instead of the pre paid amounts.”

Most cruise lines have similar gratuity policies, though rates vary and are subject to change. Before cruising, guests booked on any cruise line should investigate the gratuity rate, how tips are charged to guests’ accounts, and what other gratuity-related policies may be in place.

A guest aboard a Carnival cruise ship docked in Nassau has posted a video of fishing from their stateroom balcony, reeling in a catch in what is undoubtedly a very prohibited act. But what do we know about who posted the video and what the cruise line’s policies may be?

Fishing From a Balcony Cabin

A guest aboard a Carnival ship has been videoed by a traveling companion while fishing from a balcony stateroom. The video, posted to TikTok by user Jessica Locklear (jessicalocklear02), shows the male passenger pulling in a fish from an obvious balcony cabin, while the female guest filming the video laughs and exclaims throughout.

No fishing rod is visible, just a lengthy piece of line and the spool it is from. As the fish comes closer, not only can viewers see that it is tangled in the line, but a hook is embedded in its mouth and small yellow lure and metal weight are also attached to the line.

You can watch the video footage below:

By size, overall markings, and the triangular body shape, the fish appears to be a buffalo trunkfish (also called cowfish, boxfish, or shell-fish).

The exact cruise ship is not identified in the video, but the male guest is wearing a Carnival Cruise Line sail-and-sign card. The blue card indicates this is the guest’s first sailing with the cruise line, as guests on their second cruises are issued red sail-and-sign cards, and higher loyalty levels have gold, silver, or white cards depending on their Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) status.

The video was posted on April 16, 2023, but there is no telling exactly when it may have been filmed. Background in the video is clearly obvious as Nassau due to the recent port improvements visible on the dock and the island’s distinctive water tower in the distance.

Several Carnival ships have visited Nassau recently: Carnival Sunrise, Mardi Gras, Carnival Elation, Carnival Paradise, Carnival Liberty, Carnival Sunshine, Carnival Dream, Carnival Conquest, and Carnival Freedom all docked in Nassau in the week prior to and including the video’s post date.

The TikTok account in question is not a prolific one, with just six videos posted and 728 followers as of this writing. The fishing video has been posted twice, and together has gone viral with more than 2 million views.

The video cuts off as the fish is on the balcony floor, and it is not known what became of the fish after the video, as no further updates have been posted. If the fish was tossed back overboard, it is unlikely to have survived.

Is Fishing From a Cruise Ship Permitted?

It must be noted that fishing off a cruise ship balcony is absolutely not permitted, as it would present a hazard not only to marine wildlife – there being no guarantee that any fish caught would not be protected, or other marine life such as sea turtles, corals, or stingrays would not be harmed – but could also be hazardous to the ship if items swung from a line onto other balconies.

Therefore, the individuals in this video likely broke several cruise line policies as well as local Bahamian law with this stunt if they did not previously apply for and receive the appropriate fishing permit.

While Carnival Cruise Line does permit fishing rods to be brought onboard their ships, such equipment can only be used while off the ship in an appropriate port of call.

The video in question does not show any fishing rod, just the spool of line.

Animal products are not permitted to be brought back and taken off the ship in the United States, and therefore if the individual did keep the fish, it would not have cleared customs inspection. Fish caught on an authorized shore excursion must be shipped back to a guest’s home.