Trash in the water at Labadee (Columbus Cove)

[ericrz]

Hi all:

 

My family and I were on the Symphony of the Seas last week and in Labadee on Monday, November 20.  We rode the tram to Columbus Cove beach and got a nice set of lounge chairs under a couple of umbrellas.

 

When we looked at the water, we couldn't believe the amount of trash floating in it.  Plastic bags, bottles, bottle caps, papers, you name it.  I have been to hundreds of beaches in my life and I've never seen anything like it.  Literally, the first thing people were saying as they arrived at the beach was "look at all the trash in the water."

 

My brother took it upon himself to start cleaning some of the garbage out of the water.  He soon had several kids helping, making a game out of it, and some adults jumped in to help as well.  After about 20-30 minutes of this, some RCCL staff showed up with garbage bags and rakes.  The in-water volunteers would pile the trash on the shore, and the RCCL staff would rake it into piles and then bag it.  Whether they were already planning to do this or if they were sort of shamed into it by seeing passengers picking up garbage, I don't know.  (In any case, the staff never went into the water to retrieve any trash, leaving that to the passengers.)

 

Has anyone else ever seen this at Columbus Cove?  Maybe we were just unlucky, a recent storm pushed a bunch of trash into the bay or whatever.  But it was surprising and kind of disappointing to start our beach day by picking trash out of the water!!  Given that RCCL recently reported more than a billion dollars in quarterly profits, it would have been nice to see them be a little more on top of this (either with additional staff or some sort of technological solution to filter trash at the mouth of the bay).

Edited November 27, 2023 by ericrz
Typo fixes.