Maine City Votes to Limit Cruise Ship Passengers to 50 or Less

A year after the city of Bar Harbor, Maine voted to limit the number of ships and passengers they would allow to disembark on any given season, another Maine city has passed an ordinance to do something similar.

According to an article published by WGME 13, the city of Belfast, Maine and their city council have voted unanimously to limit the number of passengers that can disembark at city owned ports at any given time, however, the number is a bit surprising.

Depending on the cruise ship, some of these vessels can accommodate north of 5,000 guests per cruise. This makes the limit the city has put on passengers seem a bit unrealistic. The news station reports that ships certified to carry 50 (or more) passengers will no longer to disembark passengers at the dock or by ferry tender anymore.

My question is are there any cruise 'ships' out there that are certified to carry LESS than 50 people? I don't think there are to be honest either. As a matter of fact, even Cap'n Fish's whale watch boats are certified to carry more than that. Albeit those aren't really 'cruise ships'.

As someone who is an avid cruiser, I have never been on a ship licensed to carry less than 50 people. And, maybe that's the point of all this. Perhaps the city wants to 'ban' cruise ships in the harbor without actually banning cruise ships, know'm sayin?

At any rate, there are still other ports in Maine that welcome cruise ships so it will be interesting to see if any other municipalities vote to limit ship size and passenger numbers in the future.