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But while that's good news for cruise operators, it's also brought oceanic traffic to unprecedented levels in one of the world's premiere leisure destinations.Already busy islands are seeing even more people spilling onto their shores, like Grand Cayman, where nearly 1.8 million cruise passengers disembarked last year - up more than 700,000 from five years earlier.
Places where big ships rarely pulled in are suddenly hectic, with the tiny Central American nation of Belize greeting more than 400 ships in 2004, up from about 70 in 2000.
And it's only getting worse, with new megaships in the pipeline that can carry nearly 6,000 passengers at once - 50 per cent more than today's largest ships." industry lately has...Read more...