The Carnival Glory Cruise Ship docked in the Belize City harbor this morning but for a while, none of its passengers could disembark.
It happened at around 7:30 in the vicinity of the One Man Caye Channel after a security guard spotted a body floating near the ship. The incident threw the entire vessel into crisis mode thinking it could be a case of a passenger overboard.
The cruise ship deployed its rescue vessel to recover the body - and a visual inspection confirmed that it was not a passenger - but a man of Hispanic descent, who has been classified as a John Doe of Belizean origin.
At this time multiple sources have told us that it is the body of a fisherman and former watchman who was well known in both of the city's two major Co-op's And while we have a name we can't report on it until family members have been reliably informed of the death.
This afternoon we spoke to The BTB Director of Cruise, Abil Castaneda about the freak event that threw the city's cruise terminals into flux:
Abil Castaneda - Director, Responsible for Cruise
"After the incident transpired after around 7 o'clock this morning there is some protocol that must be put in place by the cruise line, anytime an incident like that happens there is an emergency protocol for in the event that anybody fell overboard, so what happens in that case that they have scramble their emergency teams, local authorities were also brought on the ship to investigate what was happening, while all of that is happening, no cruise passenger can come off the ship and so all in all, what it led to was 3 hours of delay in having our cruise passengers tender off and come on to shore to do their tours and to visit their destination. Approximately about half of the tours that were scheduled off that particular ship has been affected, some of them let to cancellations as well."
The Belize Port Authority along with the Belize Police Department and Belize Coast Guard, did go onboard to make their own checks.
No injuries were observed on the body and at this time no foul play is suspected. The body was transported to the Belize National Forensic Science Service morgue to await a postmortem examination.
