S.O.S. to the cruise ship industry: Weed out your bad apples

Credible cruise lines like Seadream are being hurt by
 other companies who place an emphasis on profits
 instead of passenger safety.

As yet another Costa Cruise ship limped into port - the Costa Allegra had to be towed to the Seychelle islands after losing power in the Indian Ocean this week - and the search for bodies continued on the partially sunken Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy - I was left to wonder why anyone would sail with a cruise line that obviously has issues with both its ships and crew?

The only good news about the Costa Allegra incident is that the vessel's captain wasn't the first to abandon ship as was the case in the Costa Concordia disaster.

There are ways for cruise passengers to check on a ship's sanitation record - the very credible Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues an annual ranking which provides an honest evaluation of almost every ship's sanitation issues and cruise lines react very quickly to the CDC's findings. You can view the latest rankings at http://wwwn.cdc.gov/InspectionQueryTool/InspectionSearch.aspx. Anything below an 86 score should be a warning to stay away from this product.

However, to my knowledge, there's no such rating system for a cruise ship's mechanical sea worthiness, or for that matter, how qualified the ship's crew is.

The Costa incidents showcase the need for a CDC-type regulatory body to check ships from stem to stern and rank their sea worthiness. There may be many ships on the high seas carrying thousands of people that have machanical issues and lives are being placed at risk. And, thanks to the Costa Concordia's captain, suspicion now hangs over every member of a ship's crew regarding how well prepared they are to handle an emergency.

Because no one government rules the high seas, maybe it's time the United Nations sets standards regarding the sea worthiness for cruise ships and their crew. The UN can work with national coast guards and give them the right to evaluate ships before they leave port.

Thanks to Costa, the cruise industry is in a free fall - business is down 40 per cent since the Concordia sinking and the Allegra power failure won't help matters.

The cruise industry must start policing itself and weed out the bad apples before any more damage is done.