Overnight Cruise Stays Banned at Sydney’s White Bay Terminal
By Tom Stieghorst of travelweekly.com
Overnight stays by cruise ships at the White Bay Cruise Terminal in Sydney, Australia, have been banned until new regulations controlling the use of low-sulfur fuels are enacted.
The Port Authority of New South Wales suspended overnight stays as of May 27, a spokesman said.
The next scheduled overnight stay at White Bay is in December 2015. The spokesman said the ban was implemented to ensure that any future requests by cruise lines to berth a ship burning high sulfur fuel overnight would be declined.
There is a concern that sulfur emissions from cruise ship engine exhaust could threaten Australia’s rapid ascent as a cruise market. Last week, a report from CLIA said more than 1 million Australians cruised for the first time in 2014, representing 4.2% of the population.
I would like to see a quarterly report on how many cruise ships have had Norovirus outbreaks on their ships with dates and duration. Is one available?? We got off the HAL Ryndam a day early on July 3, 2015 as they finally decided to do a deep-cleaning after battling the Norovirus for our entire 2 week cruise out of Harwich, England. Apparently the Norovirus had started before our cruise but could not be eliminated.