Victory! - Oceana USA
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May 5, 2004

Victory!


[editor’s note, by Jason] (This post is by Andy Sharpless, Oceana’s CEO.)


Eleven hard months of campaigning against Royal Caribbean. Oceana’s demand was simple: stop dumping untreated and poorly treated sewage into our oceans! The company knew that technology existed to treat their waste water — indeed it had installed this equipment on three of its 28 ships. We called on them to commit to cleaning up their entire fleet.

Two days ago, on Monday morning, I received a Fed Ex letter from Richard Fain, Chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean, committing to installing advanced wastewater treatment equipment on the entire fleet, to audit its performance and to publicly disclose the results of those audits. (You can read the letter by following the link above.)

While the company doesn’t want to give Oceana credit for this decision, we’re sure that our months of flying banners behind airplanes, recruiting almost 90,000 people to pledge not to take a cruise, leafletting passengers onboard ships in the middle of the night, and holding rallies in ports in both the Atlantic and the Pacific were key drivers of their decision. And we commend them for it! Mr. Fain and the company are doing the right thing, and the oceans will be cleaner as a result. They are the second largest cruise ship operator, and their example will reverberate through the industry for the benefit of our oceans and our beaches.

We are also continuing the fight for clean oceans by working hard for passage of the Clean Cruise Ship Act of 2004, which is federal legislation that would make sure all cruise companies using American ports meet the standard we fought to make Royal Caribbean meet. This is a good day for everyone who cares about the future of our oceans, and who is working to prevent the irreversible collapse of our ocean wildlife.