For many hard-working Americans, going on a cruise in the Bahamas is the ultimate vacation. A little sun, a lot of food, and a pre-planned schedule of activities to keep you conveniently entertained for days on end.
For the rest of us, an eight-day Carnival cruise sounds like the worst punishment imaginable: being trapped on a massive, floating mall-casino with thousands of pasty strangers for a week. And that’s when everything goes according to plan. (I think we all remember the ill-fated “Poop Cruise from Hell,” when a Carnival ship’s engine room caught fire and 3,143 passengers had to spend their vacation wading through their own sewage and fighting over cereal boxes.)
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Why anybody would pay good money to subject themselves to such tortures, I can’t say. But I will tell you there’s an even bigger reason why I wouldn’t be caught dead aboard a Carnival cruise line: Fishing is strictly prohibited while aboard the ship.
According to a recent report from CruiseHive, two guests who were caught fishing on board a Carnival ship have been banned from the cruise line for life. Apparently, the guests were docked in Nassau when they decided to drop a line from their open-air stateroom balcony. Using a weighted yellow lure, they hooked into a small reef fish. While one of them hauled the fish up to the balcony, the other passenger filmed the catch on their phone and shared the footage to TikTok, where it quickly went viral and amassed over 2 million views. They were later busted and reprimanded for this unspeakable act.
“Fishing from our ships is prohibited,” a Carnival representative told reporters on Wednesday. “We have identified the guests and they will not be cruising on Carnival again.”
@alexthecruiser This is awful, and breaking major rules. #carnival #carnivalcruise #fish #fishing #bahamas #fishinglife #fishingtiktoks ♬ original sound – Alex the Cruiser
The “smoking gun” clip was quickly removed from TikTok, but copies of the video are still up on the social media site. One of the most entertaining shows the unnamed male passenger hand-lining and grabbing the fish before setting it down on the wooden deck. The clip ends before he can unhook the fish.
The creator of this particular video, who calls himself “Alex the Cruiser,” narrates the whole scene, expressing his outrage and contempt for the two rogue anglers.
“I sure hope Carnival finds this,” he says, pointing out that ship rules clearly dictate that you can only rip a lip while on a sanctioned excursion. “Also, why aren’t they at a beach or something, or doing something fun?”
Well bud, as the old saying goes: One man’s pleasure is another man’s pain. More than a few TikTok commenters have given alexthecruiser a pretty good e-lashing for his anti-fishing stance and tattle-tale attitude. One user pointed out that he is probably “a blast at parties” while another compared him to “that one kid [who] reminds the teacher we had homework.”
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Kidding and Carnival rules aside, however, the actions of the two unsanctioned anglers are not to be condoned. It’s unknown if the buffalo trunkfish survived the ordeal, but the cruise passengers could have been more careful in landing and unhooking the fish. It’s also unclear whether Bahamian fishing regulations allow sport anglers to target buffalo trunkfish, although they’re described as both “a species of least concern” and a “highly esteemed food fish” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. So, it’s not like they were beheading a bonefish or plucking the eyes out of a permit.
Still, they could have broken Bahamian law if they didn’t possess the appropriate fishing license, and they definitely broke the cardinal rule of sharing fishing content online: Leave illegal activity off social media or pay the consequences.
They also proved that some people just aren’t refined or obedient enough to set foot on a cruise ship. Which is perfectly fine with me—I’ll take a deserted island over a floating prison any day.