Interesting news about Med cruises

We cruised the Baltic last August and the Eastern Med in May--all at great prices.
One stop was in Turkey, and that port saw 2 ships most days--down from 5 ships.
The economies of Turkey, Greece and many Med islands is completely dependent upon cruise ships and tourism.
Shop keepers were very concerned about the future of their businesses. And some of the ports really had some great shopping.
We've cruised to virtually every island in the Western, Eastern and Southern Caribbean, and have little interest in going to such places--especially with present health issues from Zika.

We went transatlantic to Barcelona in may. When we were going through the strait of Gibraltar, it's obviously somewhat narrow and there were many cargo ships and small fishing boats there too.

From our balcony, we watched as several of these small fishing boats were within 50 to 100 yards of our ship pretty regularly. But it got kind of ugly a few times.

We could see their nets strung out for hundreds of yards and at least 3 or 4 were strung across our path over the course of about an hour or 2. It was very obvious that we were going to cross over them and likely ruin their nets.

These boats became very aggressive and their people on board were screaming and yelling at the bridge. again, this wasn't all at once but happened several times over a few ours with several different boats.

. A couple of these boats even acted like they were going to ram our ship and aggressively played chicken with the front of our ship. One was really out of control and I really expected the crew to actually do something to defend the ship other than just blaring the horn.

It was a bit unsettling. I knew these guys were just mad about their fishing nets being destroyed but it sure made me think how easy it would be for someone with bad intentions to attack the ship.

In my opinion, it's just a matter of time.

We cruise a lot and clearly the European market is not doing as well these days. Fewer North Americans are going to Europe due to problems in Turkey and terrorism.

I think it is still safe to go to Europe, but not everyone agrees.

The actual statistics are that more Americans are going to Europe this year than in previous years. They just may not be going on cruises to do so.

I too was a little surprised about the cruise liner running over fishing nets. I think there is more to this story than was described in the post. It may be that the nets had been set in a designated shipping lane where they should not have been.

On June 22 we cruised around Sicily and back to Rome with Windstar. The ship carried 179 out of a capacity of 212. That doesn't count as a poor turnout.

Cruising in general does indeed bring in the tourists and their money. On the other hand it can wreak havoc on the aquatic life and the lives of the villages and their inhabitants. I'm not a cruiser and don't ever intend on being one.

The NCL Jade is in the process of moving their western European cruise itinerary to Norway, Iceland, Scotland and England. One can only speculate that they were in the process of cancelling many Mediterranean ports anyway and their motivation was that the Med cruises aren't selling and were being cancelled.