Carnival just announced that they will be returning to the Port of Baltimore. Back in June, the Miami based line announced that they would reposition the Carnival Pride and sail her out of Tampa year round effective last November. It was largely speculated this had to do with new EPA regulations that require ships to switch to a low sulphur bunker fuel while in US waters. The technology to make the switch is already in place, the problem was the price of the low sulphur fuel is much more.
The solution is the Pride will be retrofitted to include new scrubbers that can remove some of the contaminates and Carnival states that the EPA is in agreement that this will work as a replacement for the fuel grade switch.
The announcement today sates that they plan on returning her to Baltimore to resume her Bahamas cruises starting March 2015.