70,000 crew members still stuck on board more than 100 cruise ships

Stranded at sea: 70,000 crew members are still stuck on board more than 100 cruise ships begging to go home amid the coronavirus pandemic

• Tens of thousands of crew members worldwide are still on cruise ships out at sea
• Workers are confined to cabins aboard ships which are still out at sea
• It has been weeks since governments and cruise lines negotiated disembarkation for passengers arriving in vessels with infections
• On board ships some crew members are no longer getting paid; some have died 
• There are 70,000 crew members on board 102 ship stuck who are stuck at sea 
• Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

Carolina Vásquez lost track of days and nights, unable to see the sunlight while stuck for two weeks in a windowless cruise ship cabin as a fever took hold of her body.

On the worst night of her encounter with COVID-19, the Chilean woman, a line cook on the Greg Mortimer ship, summoned the strength to take a cold shower fearing the worst: losing consciousness while isolated from others.

Vásquez, 36, and tens of thousands of other crew members have been trapped for weeks aboard dozens of cruise ships around the world – long after governments and cruise lines negotiated their passengers’ disembarkation. Some have gotten ill and died; others have survived but are no longer getting paid.

Both national and local governments have stopped crews from disembarking in order to prevent new cases of COVID-19 in their territories. Some of the ships, including 20 in U.S. waters, have seen infections and deaths among the crew. But most ships have had no confirmed cases.

Carolina Vasquez, she rides a tender in the Falkland Islands, as a crew member on board the Greg Mortimer, a ship operated by the Australian firm Aurora Expeditions and owned by a Miami company. Vasquez has been stuck in a cruise cabin with no windows and COVID-19. The ship is floating off the coast of Uruguay

‘I never thought this would turn into a tragic and terrifying horror story,’ Vásquez told The Associated Press in an interview through a cellphone app from the Greg Mortimer, an Antarctic cruise ship floating off Uruguay. Thirty-six crew members have fallen ill on the ship.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that about 80,000 crew members remained on board ships off the U.S. coast after most passengers had disembarked. 

The Coast Guard said Friday that there were still 70,000 crew members in 102 ships either anchored near or at U.S. ports or underway in U.S. waters.

The total number of crew members stranded worldwide was not immediately available. But thousands more are trapped on ships outside the U.S., including in Uruguay and the Manila Bay, where 16 cruise ships are waiting to test about 5,000 crew members before they will be allowed to disembark.

As coronavirus cases and deaths have risen worldwide, the CDC and health officials in other countries have expanded the list of conditions that must be met before crews may disembark.

Cruise companies must take each crew member straight home via charter plane or private car without using rental vehicles or taxis. Complicating that mission, the CDC requires company executives to agree to criminal penalties if crew members fail to obey health authorities’ orders to steer clear of public transportation and restaurants on their way home.

‘The criminal penalties gave us (and our lawyers) pause,’ Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley wrote in a letter to crew members earlier this week, but he added that company executives ultimately agreed to sign.

Melinda Mann shows the empty deck on board the Koningsdam, a Holland America cruise ship off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico. Mann, a youth program manager for the cruise line, has been stuck on board for 50 days as the CDC and the cruise ship companies negotiate terms to disembark crew and passengers in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic

Melinda Mann, 25, a youth program manager for Holland America, spent more than 50 days without stepping on dry land before finally disembarking from the Koningsdam ship Friday in Los Angeles. Before she was transferred to the Koningsdam, she tried to walk off another ship with other U.S. crew members last week but the ship´s security guards stopped them.

For 21 hours a day, Mann remained isolated in a 150-square-foot (14-square- meter) cruise cabin that is smaller than her bedroom in her Midland, Georgia, home. She read 30 books and was only able to leave her room three times a day to walk around the ship. Her contract ended April 18, so she was not paid for weeks.

‘Keeping me in close captivity for so long is absolutely ridiculous,’ Mann said in a telephone interview.

Earlier this week in Nassau, Bahamas, crew members from Canada aboard the Emerald Princess were told to prepare to be flown home in a charter plane. But the Bahamian government did not allow the ship to dock in the end.

Leah Prasad´s husband is among the stranded crew members. Prasad said she has spent hours tracking down government agencies to help her husband, a Maitre D´Hotel for Carnival.

‘He is getting discouraged. He is stuck in a cabin,’ Prasad said. ‘It is not good for his mental health.’

A number of cruise ships are pictures waiting out at sea in the Philippines

Crew members are pictured aboard the Norwegian Epic cruise ship docked at the Port of Miami sitting on their balconies. Most crew members are stuck in ships with no confirmed cases but are rejected by governments because of new rules to avoid importing more virus cases

Angela Savard, a spokeswoman for Canada’s foreign affairs, said the government was continuing to explore options to bring Canadians home.

For those aboard the Greg Mortimer in Montevideo, desperation is setting in, crew members told the AP.

The Antarctic cruise set sail from Argentina on March 15, after a pandemic had already been declared. The ship’s physician, Dr. Mauricio Usme, said that when the first passenger fell ill, on March 22, he was pressured by the captain, the cruise operator and owners to modify the health conditions that had to be met for the ship to be admitted into ports.

Dr. Usme refused. The boat anchored in the port of Montevideo on March 27. More than half of its passengers and crew tested positive for COVID-19. Finally, on April 10, 127 passengers, including some who were infected, were allowed to disembark and fly home to Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada and Europe. Crew members were told to stay on board.

The Grand Princess cruise is pictured docked at the Port of Oakland in California. Hundreds of passengers disembarked from the ship, including some who tested positive for the new coronavirus. Three cruise ships that have not carried passengers or crew members with the coronavirus will dock at the Port of Oakland for several months

The doctor was hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Montevideo, along with a Filipino crew member, who later died.

‘People are exhausted and mentally drained,’ said Dr. Usme, now recovered and back on the Greg Mortimer. ‘It’s a complex situation. You feel very vulnerable and at imminent risk of death.’

CMI, the Miami-based company that manages the boat, said it has been ‘unable to get the necessary permissions’ to let crew members of 22 nationalities go home, but said they were all still under contract receiving pay.

Marvin Paz Medina, a Honduran man who works as the ship’s storekeeper, sent a video to the AP of his tiny cabin of about 70 square feet (6.5 square meters), where he has been confined for more than 35 days. ‘It’s hard being locked up all day, staring at the same four walls,’ he said.

Paz Medina says his children keep asking him when he’s coming home, but he doesn’t have an answer.

‘We are trapped, feeling this anxiety that at any moment we can get seriously ill,’ said Paz Medina. ‘We do not want this anymore. We want to go home.’

A passenger disembarks the Australian cruise ship the Greg Mortimer along with others to make their way to the international airport in Montevideo, Uruguay pictured last month. The ship had been anchored off Uruguay’s coast since March 27 with more than half its passengers and crew infected with coronavirus

Satellite images reveal fleets of empty cruise ships huddled in the Caribbean and Philippines because they’re unable to dock due to the coronavirus pandemic 

Satellite images have revealed fleets of empty cruise liners clustering together at sea because they are unable to drop anchor at ports.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, few industries have been hit hard harder than the cruise industry.  

The ships are viewed as floating petri dishes and, while passengers are no longer on them, several crew members still are. 

Now, with no incoming bookings and unable to dock, many have taken to huddling together in the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the South China Sea to get out of the way of major shipping lanes. 

Satellite images have revealed empty cruise ships  huddling together to get out of the way of major shipping lanes. Pictured: Cruise ships off the coast of the Bahamas, May 2

Three groups of cruise ships, with 15 in total, are clustered together off Coco Cay and Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas 

Because there are not enough traditional berths to accommodate cruise ships, many have been forced out to sea. 

Two ports, Coco Cay and Great Stirrup Cay, in the Bahamas where Royal Caribbean ship and Norwegian cruise liners, are storing vessels.

According to The Drive, the ships are in three groups – 15 in total – that are about 30 miles apart from each other. 

They have names such as Harmony of the Seas, Celebrity Edge and Azamara Pursuit. 

There are also at least 12 cruise ships, such as the MV Ruby Princess, that are sitting just off the coast of the Philippines.   

The Philippines Coast Guard says the cruise liners have to wait for clearance from the Bureau of Quarantine before they dock in Manila. 

There are currently no passengers aboard the cruise liners, but many crew members are still onboard.

As of May 5, CNN says there are more than 57,000 crew members aboard 74 cruise ships in and around US ports, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

About a dozen cruise liners, such as the Ruby Princess, have been sitting off the coast of the Philippines (pictured) 

Hundreds are more are stuck around the world and, because the ships can’t dock, they are unable to get home.  

Alex Adkins, a senior stage technician on Freedom of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship, says he has been at sea since mid-March when last guests disembarked  

‘Since then, we’ve had no guests and we’ve just been floating off the coast of Barbados,’ Adkins, an American, told CNN.

Employees said they don’t understand why they aren’t free to leave ships if they’ve cleared 14-day quarantines.  

‘I’m hoping we don’t get forgotten about, to be honest,’ MaShawn Morton, an employee for Princess Cruises, told CNN.

‘It seems like nobody cares what’s happening to us out here.’   

Carnival Cruise Line says it plans to resume some operations in August, but Norwegian Cruise Line says there is ‘substantial doubt’ about its future.

‘We believe the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on our operations and global bookings have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on our financial results and liquidity, and such negative impact may continue well beyond the containment of such an outbreak,’ the company’s filing on Tuesday. 

This is not the first time cruise ships have been pictured cloistered together.

Last week, cruise liners and cargo ships were forced to drop anchor off the Isle of Wight, in England, to avoid busy shipping lanes.

A spokesman for the UK’s Department for Transport confirmed that certain ships have been given higher priority due to the crisis and cruise liners are currently low priority as they are not carrying any passengers.  

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