How about a fun filled ocean going tour of the seashore of Alaska. Watch global warming in progress, see the polar bears starve because the sea ice is to thin to allow them to hunt. Oh and enjoy having your cruise ship kill a whale.
That is what a Princess Cruises luxury liner has done. The whale, an adult female humpback measuring 43 feet in length, was found on the ship’s so-called “bulbous bow”. The whale is believed to have become attached to the bow overnight before being discovered Wednesday morning.
Officials from the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service briefly detained the ship, the Sapphire Princess, in an area south of Juneau to open an investigation and remove the whale’s body.
Humpback whales are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The whale was discovered on the ship near Tracy Arm, a fjord known for its tidewater glaciers, waterfalls and abundant marine life. Tracy Arm is a popular destination for Alaska cruise ships.
It was the third whale incident involving a Princess Cruises ship since 2001.
Last year, the same ship was discovered to have a dead fin whale pinned to its bow when it returned to Vancouver from an Alaska voyage. Fin whales, like humpbacks, are classified as endangered.
In 2007, the company paid $750,000 to settle a criminal charge related to a dead whale found just outside Alaska’s Glacier Bay in 2001.
That whale, a pregnant humpback, was found to have had its skull crushed. Although Princess did not admit in the settlement to striking the whale, the company pleaded guilty to failing to operate one of its vessels, the Dawn Princess, at a safe speed around whales.
In a statement Princess said it was “fully cooperating” with the investigation into the Tracy Arm incident.